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The Teatro Povero of Monticchiello is bringing this year once again into its public square a new play, an 'autodramma', to
use the definition first coined by Giorgio Strehler: a drama put together collectively by a whole village, an inherently experimental project now reaching its 45th chapter.
Meetings of the Company
and all the villagers started in January—we discussed possible themes for this year's show, then summary scenarios, and finally the proposed script. A long gestation period, bringing together
a wide range of different levels of experience: life histories, memories, echoes of public and political debates. This time, the process has focussed on getting the citizen-actors of Monticchiello
to ask themselves questions about the risks, uncertainties and hopes of a world in rapid and indecipherable transformation—all this in a particular year when we collectively face key turning-points
which clash with each other in paradox. On the one hand, a community which has been celebrating 150 years since its birth as a nation; on the other hand the umpteenth report on the national public
debt, which seems to undermine radically any firm motivation for coexistence between the old and young generations. It's becoming harder and harder, at all levels, to gather all these changes into
a single meaningful pattern. This village community is similar to many other larger ones, and perhaps indeed can become a metaphor for those others, a kind of summary representation of them.
On this smaller scale, in fact, it's easier to perceive the confrontation between the social instinct on the one hand, and on the other hand its antisocial opposite, the instinct towards an enclosed
unresponsive individualism, a turning in on oneself which often results from bewilderment and a feeling of powerlessness.
Our show therefore takes as its point of departure an 'ordinary'
situation. It's the story of a family and a community gathered round the deathbed of a charismatic figure: an extremely old woman named Argelide. She's a strong, tenacious character,
full-blooded and down to earth. All the people round her seem to be fragmenting, they're unable to deal with the pressures of a twisted economic situation which is pushing everyone towards just
looking after themselves; but on Argelide's bed we see played out the most important game of all: does one give in, or not, to the temptation of cutting oneself loose irrevocably from the rest of
society? Do we just join in the banquet mounted by the 'Worms'—grotesque cunning figures always ready to party—or do we try to resist? And if we find it better to resist, resist
in whose name? What sort of optimism can we arm ourselves with, when the rules of the game seem to offer no way out? Perhaps, after all, our only salvation is to be found in the subversive
strength of fantasy—the one force capable of changing the rules....
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