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Teatro Povero di Monticchiello 2008 Stage-st(r)uck VillageSooner or later it could happen that those responsible for public policy may decide, after decades of indifference, to pay
serious attention to the plight of all Italy’s small centres of population, scattered around unchangiing pockets in nature and history, rendered almost invisible by the tangled expanding jungle of neglect
and marginalization.
And somewhere there will certainly be a person who cherishes not only a treasure trove of memories, but also a collection of objects which tell the story of an important transition in
history – objects of utility but also toys, lovingly crafted, untransferable concrete expressions of a life and a memory.
In the same way it could turn out that a musical “ensemble” which has been
able on so many occasions to give voice and expression to the feelings of a community should inexplicably find itself “breathless”, just when it is supposed to be launching a ceremony in which many hopes are
invested.
These pieces of “social science fiction” (not as fictional as all that, perhaps) come together to form the starting point for the TPM’s 2008 autodramma. A tale of suspense and
unease is developed in surreal fashion, to depict a particular state of uncertainty through a blend of apprehension and irreverence, trepidation and mockery.
Might it perhaps happen that, along paths
that unwind between memory and modernity, we find a way of achieving the miracle of turning a piece of memory into a concrete thing, of reassembling and giving new life to the disjointed limbs of a Pinocchio
doll from peasant land which our collector has been jealously hoarding?
A collage of typical events from the story of that puppet, whom we have all got to know from childhood onwards, will enable us to
glimpse a way of escape, the umpteenth transformation of the little village which has performed Pinocchio in the past, and of which he is now the symbol. That constant oscillation between hope and
disappointment, truthfulness and lies, good intentions and disastrous collapses, which make the puppet’s story so “human”, enables our play to reach a conclusion where it is possible to break out of deadlock
by putting people and things, promises and fulfilments, expectations and disappointments back into the places where they belong. A conclusion in which a community can cease to be mute and express
itself once more in a form which is not rhetorical, not formulaic, not imposed from above. Where trust and mistrust, between them, can give shape to a new construction of the future – a modest one
perhaps, but based on a mature balanced repossession of “well tempered” memories. |
