2004 Presentation

Fola 2004
(‘Fairy-tale 2004’)

‘Fairy-tale 2004’ marks our 38^th year of theatre activity, and sums up all the doubts, the anxieties and the difficulties which have beset the troubled autumnal period of the Teatro Povero for the past ten years.  This is a time of unease, of crumbling convictions, of a sense of identity which is fading and runs the risk of vanishing altogether.  It is getting more and more difficult to maintain a strong link with peasant civilization, using that memory which has been the vital core foundation of the whole theatre experience.  The obstacles are the inexorable passing of the generations, which pushes steadily further away any deeply felt direct contact with the peasant past; and, even more importantly, the deep and rapid changes undergone by the society in which we now live  a society which tends to replace a deep-rooted sense of belonging with casual passing satisfactions, as though convinced that a new type of ‘happiness’ is attainable via all kinds of short cuts, following the now well-established ‘throw-away’ pattern.

This is the basic theme of this year’s play, which is picked up in silhouette, as it were, against the narrative of the ‘Story of Campriano’.  The thread of this old popular folk-tale, an entertaining blend of tragedy and comedy – representing an old-fashioned type of theatre, sunlit and serene, which aims to fix itself in a kind of unbreakable permanence – is interrupted several times and almost shattered by the intrusion of episodes from outside which break up its logic and its continuity.  The confident voices of memory, those few suriviving but still active voices of peasant civilization, meet up with new alien voices, equally vibrant, and these two compete in contrasting ways against the provocative vocation of silence, breaking the continuity of the story which then has to reconstruct itself patiently over and over again.
But for how long can it do this?  From what point of view?  With what new perceptions?
This play tries to give an answer, making use also of a different staging venue from the one used up to now.

TEATRO POVERO DI MONTICCHIELLO - Autodramma 2004

Fola 2004 - (‘Fairy-tale 2004’)

The Teatro Povero is asking itself once again whether its long-standing attachment to its former roots as a peasant community can hold out against the passing of time.  These questions relate both to the tenor and organization of ordinary life and to the annual theatre productions themselves.  This year there is a performance of the old folk-tale about the crafty peasant Campriano, a text of black farce with which both actors and regular audiences are very familiar.  But the story will be interrupted more than once by intrusions expressing a contemporary disquiet.  Some of these relate to the harsher realities of the village’s history as a sharecropping community up until 1960; others allude to intractable problems from the contemporary world, such as are faced by young people trying to create themselves a future in the locality, and by destitute immigrants seeking survival in the west.  The interruptions sometimes involve the actors coming out of character, reverting to modern identities; they also at times make use of extended passages quoted from previous autodrammi.

The story of Campriano

The folk tale is partly performed, partly told verbally by two Narrators.  Campriano was a clever peasant, who had to farm impossible terrain: he and his wife Gesua were bringing up his family in dire poverty.  His six daughters were ill-dressed, starving, and ill; his hired labourer, ‘Tondo’ was so stupid as to be useless.  He feared that once his landlord remembered he was there, he would be evicted from his farm.
At the mention of the word sfratto (‘eviction’), the action is broken up by choral narratives and protests taken directly from the play entitled Sfratti, performed in 1994.  We hear about the eviction of the Bugno family in 1952, elsewhere in Siena province, when peasants from hundreds of other farms turned out in an organized protest.  And we hear ominous reiterations from backstage of phrases like ‘dismissed’, ‘sacked’, ‘on the dole’, ‘zero hours worked… zero… zero’.  Campriano – or perhaps Paolo, who plays Campriano?  hears all this in his head, and is distracted by it.
              Campriano decided on a trick to increase his income.  Every year he sold an amount of home-produced honey to the town, always getting less profit than he thought he deserved.  So this year he half-filled a number of earthenware jars with manure, and placed the honey on top.  A series of Grocers (Speziali) came to bargain for his honey: one offered ten scudi, the second eight, and the third only five.  At a certain point it emerged that stupid ‘Tondo’ had got things wrong, and put the manure in the top of some jars instead of the bottom.
                 At this moment of conflict, ‘Tondo’ steps out of character and becomes a young man in today’s Monticchiello: Gabriella, who plays Gesua, is his mother.  ‘Tondo’, whose fiancée is tired of the countryside, is going to have to leave to find a house and a job: he hates being parted from the village and from the theatre.  (From off stage we hear speeches first delivered in the 2002 autodramma, about the economic obstacles to setting up home here.)  ‘Tondo’ thinks that the nostalgia cultivated by his parents via the Teatro Povero is false, and that they are compromising with modernity.  If he has to leave Monticchiello, he would like to become a Pied Piper, enchant everything and draw it after him – all the people, all the peasant memories, all the old dialect words, everything evoked for years by the Teatro Povero – and bury them somewhere where they would illuminate the landscape for ever.  Other people from Monticchiellocome on stage to join the discussion, and ask polemically what sort of people they have now become.  Modern people with a nostalgia for a past way of life?  Ex-peasants seeking a modern future?  They seem to be neither.  ‘It’s summer 2004’, says Paolo – ‘Why Campriano, now?’
               Two people intervene from outside, with reproaches.  Anna from northern Italy came in search of the silence which the city could not provide: she thinks the Monticchiellesi don’t appreciate what they have, and should find the courage to make it work.  Hella from Tunisia came in desperation from her own country, which could not provide her with work or identity or freedom: she would be glad even to be ‘on the dole’ in a country to which she really belonged.  Before the people can react to these views, an actor knocks on Campriano’s door, forcing them to revert to acting the next scene.
                One of the Grocers comes to buy Campriano’s honey and take it away.  The story proceeds, from its two Narrators.  When the bad honey was sold, naturally the purchasers discovered the trick and complained.  The first Grocer was not sure by now which peasant he had bought those jars from, and could not at first take any action.  The next year, Campriano made sure he sold his contaminated honey to a different Grocer, and so got away with the trick for some years.  Eventually, though, they all put their heads together and realized the situation  as Campriano, being shrewd, knew would eventually happen.