Using horror-drama as the narrative genre, “STAY” aims to speak to suffering teenagers, allowing them to identify with the story without distancing themselves from it. Photography, location, and sound design are elements that intertwine and touch each other to reinforce their stark contrasts.

This specific directorial choice consistently places in the foreground the subjective division underlying all actions taken by the protagonist, Laura. First and foremost, the choice of setting stands out: a traditional Italian theatre, a quintessential place of beauty, sociability, and pretense, accentuates the depth, secrecy, and horror of private pain.

Every element of “STAY” serves this purpose: the photography emphasizes light and shadow, the sound echoes joyfully during moments of anguish and pain, the vivid colors achieved in post-production transform the elegant and welcoming theater boxes into a repellent and unsettling space.

“STAY” aligns itself with the perspective, just like the audience before the stage, it doesn’t judge the characters’ actions but rather observes the drama captured by the paradoxical beauty of horror. The decision was to feature a single protagonist on stage, alone in her pain and in her way of interpreting bonds and life. Far from moral judgements, we have kept Laura’s subjective experience as the ultimate truth: symptoms and suffering cannot find their voice if suppressed by norms and others’ judgments. The repetition of visual elements (theatre boxes, chairs, colours, decorations, shadows dressed in the same attire as the protagonist) multiplies the sense of anguish, enhancing the impossibility of escaping the burden of pain that overwhelms and surrounds the actions and motions within the theatre.

“STAY” refrains from providing explanations or interpretations; instead, it chooses to emphasize the most dramatic aspect of self-harm and suicide: the absence of answers. This specific narrative choice finds support in clinical studies in the field that recognize the violent action of injuries on the body as a concrete substitution for the symbolism conveyed by words; when verbal expression is no longer sustained by the necessity to find compassion from others, pain transforms into a muted self-injurious urgency.