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1. Early stages
The activity of the Teatro Povero has roots in Monticchiello which go back earlier than the date of its formal
beginnings. Various evidence shows that theatre has been an important component of the life and history of this village over a long period.
The earliest plays performed had more the character of a traditional popular festival, and were seen as a recreational sideline to village life.
However, theatre rapidly took on a new and important
meaning for Monticchiello, when it was realized that this complex ‘ritual’ could help the village to overcome the threat of isolation and social breakdown. (At that time Monticchiello was facing both
depopulation and the disadvantages of its isolated position: even an asphalted road was only achieved in the 1970s.)
Commitment to the theatre project thus developed in an atmosphere of community
solidarity and intellectual purpose. Theatre became an important element in the raising of the village’s consciousness, in its efforts to understand itself and achieve an identity. It was in 1967
that the village first sought the attention of surrounding communities (which were also themselves facing depopulation, because of a major agricultural crisis), with the production of
L’Eroina di Monticchiello (The Heroine of Monticchiello)
— a version of a romantic historical episode said to have occurred during the final war of the Sienese Republic against the Spaniards, in 1553. The text was composed by Marcello del Balio, a priest in Montepulciano who had already revived the more popular-style ‘Bruscello’ theatre.
The experiment was successful. In 1968 it was decided to dramatize the preaching of the Blessed Giovanni Colombini in Monticchiello, when this founder of the ‘Gesuati’ order spent an important part
of his life in the village. Don Vasco Neri, parish priest of Monticchiello, put together a play called Giovanni Colombini, il Mercante Pazzo (The Mad Merchant)
, on the basis of historical material.
Well written and well performed as they were, these first two plays were no more than an opportunity for recreation, entertainment and socializing. They were
just typical historical dramas performed in costume, with no link to contemporary life; but they re-awakened a love of theatre in the Monticchiellesi. As yet there was no understanding of the potential
significance of the enterprise. 2. Autodramma (‘Performing oneself’) 1969 was the 25th anniversary of an episode in the Resistance (when, after a partisan
victory in a battle against Fascist militia, the villagers came close to being massacred by the Nazi SS), and Monticchiello decided to evoke the event in a drama, with the help of journalist and writer Mario
Guidotti.
Guidotti — himself a native of this area — recognized the enthusiasm and dedication to the theatre of the Monticchiellesi. He tried to give a more critical edge to their entertainment,
seeing that the best way was to take a deeper look at the village’s own social and cultural identity. So in July 1969 he composed Quel 6 aprile del ’44 (That Sixth of April in 1944).
Thus Monticchiello’s theatrical experiment became linked with the name of Mario Guidotti, and the resulting collaboration produced both the concept of ‘autodramma’ and the Teatro Povero as such.
In 1970 the play Noi di Monticchiello (We from Monticchiello)
was further evidence of the new dramatic formula. This time the historical inquiry focussed on representing the problems of real individuals. There was little dramatic plot: villagers confronted the public, and debated among themselves, in their own person. The show proposed a closer look at the problems of a community which was in recession but desperately seeking to affirm its identity.
It was a case of ‘théâtre-vérité
— truth-theatre’, or ‘theatre of life’, written more by its characters than by its author — written, that is, by the people of Monticchiello acting themselves (and hence the term autodramma,
literally ‘self-drama’), bearing witness to their own reality, presenting themselves in their real-life personal and social situations.
It was from this unpretentious style of performance in the 1969 and
1970 productions that Mario Guidotti was led to attach the title ‘Poor Theatre’ to this dramatic experiment of the Val d’Orcia village.
From 1969 to 1979, Monticchiello’s theatre scripts hinged on the
work of Mario Guidotti, who collected the ideas and opinions of the community on the one hand, and on the other brought in aspects of a broader reality beyond that of the village. During these years,
the plays stuck firmly to a precise formula for the composition of autodramma. The first act was set in the past, the second act in the present, and the third act was made up of a concluding
debate between the real villagers about possible prospects for the future.
Events and characters from the past were brought into the present in order to give depth to contemporary history, and sometimes
also projected into the future, setting a historical episode alongside a contemporary one. The ritual of stage performance was used to evoke the village’s problems more vividly, and to stimulate a
critical re-assessment of them from a historical and cultural point of view. In this way, confronting the present by contrasting it with the past, a clearer view of current problems was reached.
Theatre was therefore fulfilling a social purpose, constantly raising the collective consciousness, reinforcing the community’s roots while still keeping in touch with present reality. 3. The peasant inheritance During the decade 1969-79, the play produced in the summer of 1974 was an important step in the development of Monticchiello theatre.
Contadini o no (Peasants or Not), as it was entitled, marked the first entry into autodrammi
of the peasant experience — a theme which has since recurred in almost every subsequent production and become a constant point of reference.
(It has to be understood that until around 1960, Tuscan villages like Monticchiello operated under the archaic social and economic structures of mezzadria
(sharecropping). The landlord owned an estate split into small farms (poderi), each farmed by an extended family which had to produce enough food and other goods for its own survival as well as
surrendering half of everything to the landlord. Peasants as a class were heavily oppressed, and despite being the majority of the population they were isolated and despised by society. All
Monticchiellesi born in 1950 or earlier were brought up in a medieval world — and then, extremely rapidly, transferred into a modern industrial one. The trauma can be profound: Monticchiello has been
unique in exploring and facing it collectively through the medium of its community theatre. The villagers have learned to understand what happened to them by dramatizing it, for themselves and for
others. They have also learned to find a ‘voice’ in which to articulate a popular culture which for centuries had been unable to express itself.)
The theme of the 1974 production was the collapse
(for good or for ill) of the peasant family over a period of time, seen in the context of the crisis of Tuscan agricultural civilization. Problems faced were those arising from rural depopulation, the
shift to the towns, and the major social changes of the previous twenty years. The conclusion of the autodramma
focussed on the future development of the Val d’Orcia, and tried to propose a new peasant family restructured according to more humane cultural models.
From this point on, the dialogue in the plays
between past and present was centred on aspects and events from this peasant world, — a world which was now completely dead, but still vividly remembered. 4. Founding of the Co-operative
1980 was a significant year, because it marked the birth of a formal Co-operative, which still controls the theatre to this day. The institution is non-profit-making, and was created to
contribute to the spread of information and culture, and to encourage the exploitation of historical and environmental resources, as well as its main purpose of mounting community theatre and music events.
The creation of the Co-operative gave the Teatro Povero the right to draw on subsidies from the Ministry of Culture: these paid for the modern scaffolding which now seats spectators, and for more stage
and lighting equipment to give a better technical standard to shows which were slowly developing a greater degree of sophistication.
With the passing of time, the Co-operative acquired an ideological
significance, as well as fulfilling bureaucratic, financial and administrative needs. At the same time, this period also witnessed the disappearance of some individuals who had been crucial supporters
of the Monticchiello experiment. The priest Don Vasco Neri died in 1978; from 1980, Mario Guidotti no longer took authorial responsibility for the scripts; and Arnaldo Della Giovampaola retired from
directing the plays in 1981.
The emergence of the Teatro Povero Co-operative in fact coincided with a more collective spread of responsibility for the dramas. It is now the body which takes charge
of all cultural and social events organized in the village.
In the Monticchiello square, which is also the theatre, the acting took on a choral dimension, rather than being entrusted to ‘star’ individuals.
5. 1981. La Piazza a turning point Monticchiello’s theatre was born on the village square — Piazza San Martino. The piazza
is the centre of the community from every point of view: the space for social encounter, confession, decision-making and self-analysis. As the natural meeting-place over the centuries, for the whole community, it was the ideal place to stage
autodrammi, and it is transformed every summer into an astonishing stage.
The production of 1981 was dedicated to La Piazza, to the focus of peasant life in a historical community which,
after the rural exodus, takes on a new meaning through theatrical invention, and thus finds a new vitality and its proper role as the focal point for village activities.
For the first time the text was not attributed to Mario Guidotti, but simply to the people of the village. La Piazza might be seen as the most ‘self-referential’ of all the autodrammi:
never before had the villagers ‘performed themselves’ to quite such an extent. The play did not merely examine contrasts between peasant and modern life, but actually dramatized the process of
dramatization. It was an attempt to enact on stage the whole difficult process of creating a community drama. It was a heavily criticized production, but in the end fruitful and necessary: it
represented a crisis and a turning-point on several levels.
The Co-operative was having doubts about its own procedures, feeling it no longer understood the meaning of what it was doing while remaining
determined to go on doing it. There was a sense of saturation with regard to the theme of the peasant family. Some felt that the peasant world had often been portrayed with emphasis on its more
quaint, entertaining aspects, rather than in a critical spirit. Others feared that to try to resurrect that world in some form, or to present Monticchiello as a kind of rural idyll where everything was
perfect, was both dangerous and inaccurate. 1981 was a transitional year, in which it was hoped that guidelines for a new cycle would emerge.
6. The collective An air of
renewal was apparent in the following year. The group which had been involving the whole village in long, wearisome meetings taking up whole evenings during winter and spring, decided to do without its
author and its director. The production of 1982, Sorella Acqua (Sister Water), did not bear the names of Mario Guidotti or of Arnaldo Della Giovampaola.
From then on, the composition
of scripts has been entrusted to a group of four people, who start by taking ideas, themes, and problems from the general meeting, and then later submit their proposed script to the approval of the theatre
community. There are thus two levels of work, the general meeting and the smaller group. There is a continual flow and exchange of ideas and suggestions between the two levels.
In this way the
theatre has served to educate, and this affects the actors too. Among the performers of recent years there are many who were very young, or not even born, when the Teatro Povero was formed. The
well-experienced older actors have been joined by younger ones — and particular mention should be made of the more recent sound tracks, performed entirely by local musicians, with the technical recording
side entrusted to another group of young people. Thus there is clear collaboration and continuity between the generations, as is proper to a real community.
Perhaps the very survival for so many
years of this unique experiment has been due to the role played by the collective spirit in the village’s daily life, the theatre being merely the extension of a deep and wide-ranging common bond. Or,
as some would say, perhaps the theatre has actually created, or at least heightened, that community spirit. 7. New directions After 1981, the Teatro Povero seems to
have revised its traditional style and followed more modern lines. Peasant society was no longer represented simply through entertaining sketches, but was approached more critically in its historical
and sociological aspects, and always in relation to a different theme chosen for each successive drama.
One of the most striking examples was Zollet
, in 1983. The title was an invented word, signifying the clod (zolla)
of local earth which ended up being synthetically packaged for sale in the supermarket. It was ‘tinned earth’, symbol of something now available to everyone — and perhaps therefore now valueless — after having for so many years been the envied possession of a few.
Zollet
was in fact an ironic drama on the management of money, contrasting the tight-fisted attitude which was enforced on the old peasant families with the wasteful overspending imposed by modern consumer society. It left the audience to decide on the merits and demerits of each system.
In such plays, with their presentation of different aspects of a single theme, the direction now works in a double register: on the one hand the down-to-earth immediacy of rural dialect and behaviour,
presented with close realism; on the other hand (an innovation for Monticchiello), a surreal, metaphorical style bordering on ‘Theatre of the Absurd’.
Despite this clash of styles, the Teatro Povero
maintains an essential aspect of its original formula: each theme is centred on real stories and problems of the whole community, past and present. The Teatro Povero now has its own methods and its own
autonomy. In the peasant scenes, it no longer relies on facile humour and quaint proverbs, but has reconstructed the local dialect in its purest form, with at the same time a complete mastery of
theatrical technique.
Over the 25-year history of the Teatro Povero, therefore, one can trace a substantial development in the dramas of the ’80s and ’90s, compared with earlier ones. The three-part
structure of the early plays, described above in section 2, has been replaced by an increasingly tighter dramaturgy. Under the scriptwriting control of Andrea Cresti, Marco Del Ciondolo, Maria Rosa
Ceselin, and Vittorio Innocenti, the open debate with which early dramas ended was abolished. Autodrammi
now consisted simply of a ‘peasant part’ and a ‘modern part’, and the contrast between them was left to speak for itself, with no attempt to offer answers or solutions to any dilemma raised. Andrea Cresti in particular has increasingly transported on to the Teatro Povero stage the products of his wide-ranging artistic fantasy, expressing a critical and sceptical temperament always sensitive to the contradictions and paradoxes of contemporary life.
These two dramatic modes have sometimes been presented in two separate acts; sometimes alternated more rapidly and frequently (as in Zollet itself, and in Maldipodere (Farmsickness)
of 1988). In the most recent plays, starting with the extremely successful Sfratti (Evictions)
of 1994, the play has been telescoped even further into a single unbroken act, and the tension between the old world and the modern world has deliberately been increased by actual confrontation. 8. Quovadimus? Where are we going? Between 1985 and 1993, autodrammi
dealt in a variety of ways with the peasant inheritance, and its presence both positive and negative in the minds of the people. The irreversible collapse of mezzadria
was constantly dramatized, with a sense of perplexity. On the one hand its disappearance was felt as a liberation from a centuries-long oppression created by paternalism and social control: on the other hand the way in which the system had actually ended seemed to represent a lost opportunity, in which peasants had been prevented from finally realizing their age-old mythical dream of an independent ownership of land for each family. (The fact that the younger peasants, in the early 1960s, had decided of their own accord to leave farming altogether, rather than pursue this dream, was clearly recognized and often vividly expressed.) At the same time, it was realized that one cannot live entirely in memory: a new young generation was beginning to question the constant obsession with the world of
mezzadria. In 1994, Sfratti (Evictions)
confronted the theme of mass unemployment in the modern world, and questioned whether a preoccupation with past attitudes could really be of any help in dealing with such a situation. On that occasion, at least, it appeared that lessons could still be learned from the 1950s — lessons regarding the value of community solidarity in the face of hard times.
The plays of the later 1990s have been pervaded with the sense of disorientation which often afflicts people at pivotal moments of their lives. The closing century was creating a sense of
foreboding, a fear that tomorrow would produce one of those major upheavals which periodically affect mankind. Also, starting with Falci (Sickles)
of 1997, there has been an increasing preoccupation with the nature and uses of memory itself, a new scepticism about the utility of preserving concrete relics of the past. Questions of this kind struck at the very root of Monticchiello’s theatre, which had been built for so long around attempts to explore the past and keep it alive.
Gerontectomia, in 1998, produced a satirical version, in a vein of black comedy, of how society might soon be treating its senior citizens: in this context older people were shown not only as
individuals with rights to be respected, but as custodians of collective memory. Then, from 1999 to 2001, a cycle of three autodrammi
investigated the problems of survival which, in a modern industrial society, threaten a tiny rural community which is unfashionable in its lifestyle and which may even be economically unviable. In some ways this marked a return to anxieties expressed way back in 1970, when it was first clear that the old peasant structures had gone for ever and that the community must learn to live by new rules. The new dimension to the issue was the fear that the particular forms of knowledge and wisdom which emerge from a rural life-style may simply be wiped out by a modern culture which is entirely urban in its visions and its expertise.
In the new millennium, Monticchiello is pursuing a project to create a unique Museum of Traditional Tuscan Popular Theatre — it will be located in part of the former barn (granaio)
where the landlord used to collect the wheat produced for him by the peasants. Questions now arise about the future. Will this enterprise compete with the annual theatre productions, or even replace them? Is live theatre activity to give way to ‘dead’ conservation of the past? In this village, the only way to confront such issues is to dramatize them; and the 2002
autodramma
has done so. It was forced at the same time to face a painful event: the unexpected death of one of its best loved and most stalwart performers. It is hoped (as the text itself said) that this moment was a point of fresh departure rather than a full stop; and that the future will bring more changes and more surprises
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