Little daily tragedies

Greece is under a big crisis. A lot of people losing their jobs, many becoming homeless, some struggling through the day. The minimum salary is circa 700 euros, I.V.A. is 23%, 1L of milk costs 1,24 euros, 1L of petrol is 1,8 euros. Athens is hanging from some bad politicians' decisions, spurred by fat German and French banks. Somebody is going to crash down. It's just a matter of how and when.

In Epidauros things flow with the rhythms of the last Northern European tourists of the season. It's mainly sunny, just two days of rain; autumn silently shows up as a shivering breeze at dawn and sunset.

I'm working in a workshop with 5 more incredible actresses on the Euripides' Orestes. We're working on Electra's monologue in reaction to the news of the trial: her brother and she are going to die. It's the end of Agamemnon's dynasty, the extinction of his bloody line.

6 hrs of daily psychophysical training and vocal training and structured improvisations conducted by Phillip Zarrilli. In between we work autonomously on the Ancient Greek text, exercising the non-Erasmusian pronunciation and prosody.

It feels weird to be in a place on the edge of a break down. International news of the last months about how Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy risk to be bankrupt echo in my mind. Yet daily reality is different from the macro-economical landscape. I get my amazing Greek yogurt at every breakfast.

These countries have suffered for a long time. Things have always been bad or baddish. Or at least that's what we've always been told. Maybe Italy is the only one that really was better for a few decades, but still I remember that sense of “we could be much better” “we must be in the top 5” when at school we were taught that Italy was the 7^th industrial power in the world. At that time nobody even wandered about WHO was paying the actual cost for such a well being state.

In a world landscape of incertitude and threat of an economical breakdown, everyone goes under their own private tragedy. Compared all together some of them look ridiculous. Like mine. While people are losing their jobs, while some others won't be afford education or paying a rent or purchasing food, my every day little tragedy is not being able of getting a decent coffee, a constant Internet connection, dealing with feelings of missing my family and pizza, not finding a solution for my dry hair and mosquitos bites.

I wonder if feeling guilty for the comfort I've had and making efforts not to waste it is enough...

The importance of being trusted

One of my main concerns so far has always been that of trying to learn as much as I could both in my education and professional life. Through the years, since my secondary school, I recall wondering a lot about pedagogic issues applied to my personal experience as a pupil at first place - how is it that some teachers are so boring and can't "pass on" the love for the subject? what stimuli would I need in order to get more curious or to absorb even more about whatever subject? how do I get to make some use of all these notions I'm supposed to store? (Italian pedagogic system can be highly sciolistic sometimes).

These thoughts started drifting my attention toward a deep concern for language and its use, as I got more and more engaged in areas like linguistics, semiotics, literature and varied fields of expression - in one word Art - in my university studies; for I thought it was a matter of exposition.

And then, of course, the big question: what is Knowledge? Do I ever get to know things?

There's been a time when I thought I could learn only from good teachers, that is not only those who deeply know the discipline they teach but also those that put the student in the condition of really taking and carrying within what they learn. It is not (only) a matter of absorbing information but more and foremost a matter of making something out of it. Once you receive the contents it is very important to be able to handle them in authonomy.The real good teachers that I met in my educational journey were those who made me acquire skills (and contents), those who were there to watch after and help me to "walk on my own legs".

This ability in teaching is increasingly important as the student grows up and starts to build his/her own identity. We need to experience independence and mistakes in order to grow wiser. We need to be coached and mentored, not to be cuddled or, even worse, treated as notions cans.

At this status of things, another concern raised: what are the techniques a teacher should use to do this?

There is a special feature that is inner to the learning process that I find fundamental: Trust. As the learner opens up to receive from teacher, s/he abandon her/himself to dive into the unknown with the hope and the trust that s/he will be lead into the gloom. That is putting oneself in the condition of a bright blindness as s/he engages the journey with teacher. When this very personal relationship of trust fails the sweet magic of travelling safe towards interesting wanderings is broken.

Lately, I had a misfortuned encounter with a supposed coordinator that should have lead me (and other people) through a working process. Probably it was his first experience. A series of circumstances lead me to loose trust in what he was saying and, though I tried hard to take and make something out of it, I couldn't overcome that sense of being at risk in a confused landscape where my sight was kind of blurred and doubts started stopping me from doing a "good job". The lack of directions mislead my search as I struggled to stay focused. The funny thing was that the workshop was divided into two parts and the other one was run by a very good teacher, so that the enormous difference was stunningly evident at my eyes.

Once I got over the frustration of not being directed and thus not keeping the pace with the useful work during the other half of the workshop, I started thinking that it was a very helpful experience anyway. We can still learn from bad teachers. We can comprehend what we lack and what we need. I know now what directions I shouldn't go, what I want and need to work and, in a future, when I could find myself in a directing position, I know what I should never ever do.

Non tutto il male vien per nuocere (not all the bad comes to harm) ...

Cry yourself a river

I've been reading classical Greek tragedies. Nothing happens on the scene, action is communicated in synthesis, feeling are explicitly told, no blood on show, no sharp and shining knives, no killing: everything has already happened when its news reaches the stage. There's nothing one can do about it. It's Fate, it's Doom.

How can we reproduce the effect the audience experienced in Ancient Greek when watching a tragedy? How can a figure, a character, a person, an actor, an audience bear all that today? It is a commonplace that today there is no such experience that can be defined as Tragedy (with a big T) in the Western world. Yet there is such a crave for catharsis.

How can we, artistic and cultural operators, create the conditions for the audience to experiment it in a theatre? Today people cry their hearts out mainly in front of the most commercial and predictable cinema, even for the most improbable love story plots. I don't. I don't ever cry at the cinema. It is not planned, but I sincerely just never cry. On the contrary I do cry at the theatre, watching a play, and not because it is bad. In that case I'd moan loudly during the whole performance or leave the room, for I learnt and gained a form of self respect in so many years as a theatre audience: when it's bad, it's bad, no need for masochism.

I cried so many times. Emma Dante's MPalermu, Carnezzeria (saw it three times and cried the three of them) and Vita Mia; Bob Wilson's Quartet by Heiner Muller (I wanted to be Isabelle Hupper so badly); Psychopathia Synpathica by Cooperativa ESTIA with the prisoners of Bollate, Milan (again saw it three times and, in the last one, I was the only one doing a standing ovation and shout "This is good theatre, not the one we're used to be tortured with" (I was and still am in an open polemic with my hometown's theatre programming politics); Pippo Del Bono's Urlo, among many others.

The last (and probably not least) and the most mighty crying I had was for Angelica Liddell's La casa de la fuerza (Culturgest, Lisbon). 5 hours performance. I went to see it alone cos I didn't dare inviting anyone to such a long show. It was simply grand. I started uncontrollably crying after the first 5 minutes. In the first 5 minutes I couldn't breathe properly and couldn't stop thinking "Oh my God, what's happening to me? Isto mexe bué comigo...(This makes me wriggle inside!). It was about Angelica Liddell's personal hangover after the end of a big love: getting your body stronger through training, work out and running in order to survive an inner mortal hit; touching the lowest of your possible misery and humiliation in order to temper yourself to anything. You are still alive, even afterall.

From this personal dimension to the woman condition. To the tragic events that affect women in contemporary Mexico: we're talking about something that is far beyond simple breaking of Humain Rights.

Today the Tragedy seems feminine to me. All the strongest people I've met in the last few years were women. The man seems to go through an existencial weakness. He can't take decisions, he can't do the first stpe anymore, he's having a hard time being alone.

Maybe it is time to shift the abused paradigm where the woman is the one who cries and man is the column of everything. Maybe it is time for him to step aside. And cry himself a river, for it might make him stronger.

"Mamma mia, dammi 100 Lire..." (Dear mom, give me 100 Liras..."

Wednesday mid-morning at a bus stop of a small Welsh village.

It might be raining today.

A couple waits for the bus. I'm waiting too.

He pulls out all the coins from his pockets, shows his handful to her and starts counting:

5, 10, 50...1,32 (pounds). If it were Liras it would be like 2 million Liras!

She smiles at his mockery.

I turn my back to him cos I'm rather laughing.

The joke's good. 10-years late, but still good.

Would he have said it if I had known an Italian was listening? Could he imagine that an Italian could be there, at a bus stop of a village of 2000 inhabitants on the South-West Welsh coast?

100,000 lire with Caravaggio. (= more or less 50 euros)

Well, Italians are everywhere. In the latest 5 or 6 years, Italy has gone through an consistent outflow of people. I have no idea how many, nor if they've been counted at some point. Some stay just for an experience of a few months, some push it to one year length or maybe two. The longer you stay the hardest it is to come back.

Then there are those who will never come back.

Between the end of XIX cent and beginning of XX cent., Italy suffered big waves of emigration, with a spillage of millions, mostly from Southern Italy and Veneto (the North-Est region with Venice as capital). Most of them were directed to the Americas, a very long journey by ship across the Ocean. There is an old popular song that is quite representative of the times. It's called "Mamma mia, dammi cento lire". (Italian lyrics: http://www.italianissima.net/testi/mamcenl.htm - Some words are dialect, actually). A daughter (yes, it's a woman!) asking her mother to give her 100 Liras - a loooot of money at the time - to go to America. Mother doesn't want the girl to leave because it is dangerous but her brothers convince the mother to let her go. On its way to America the boat undergoes a shipwreck. Mother appeals to Fisherman to rescue her daughter's body. The poor emigrant thinks of her fine and red blood that will be drunk by fishes and her white and pure flesh be eaten by the whale. Her mother's words were right and she regrets having listened to her brothers.

It's a very sad song.

Especially if you think that at the time people were escaping from famine.

Today's migrations are of another kind, mainly high-educated people looking for a space in the job market or better opportunities for work - all the conditions they couldn't find in Italy. These people are the more likely to not come back.

It is quite an issue to decide to leave the confort of home and, let's say it, the confort of Italy. Because Italy is fucking confortable. Sometimes it is just too much.

It is quite an issue to decide to stay in Italy despite everything, and sometimes against all odds. Because Italy is fucking complicated. Sometimes it is simply too much.

Wherever you are now, wherever you come from, whatever reason you have for leaving or staying, you're experiencing the same compelling feeling that leads you to take a decision about starting a life somewhere. If you changed country and you're happy, good for you. If you're living in the same country since you were borne and that's what you want, very good.

If you haven't find a place in the world yet, well... welcome into the club, I'm a member too.

Nomadism is as hard as any other decision. It can be tasty but there's no earth you can cling to.

In any case,I know it's easy to make fun of Italian culture but, wherever you find yourself at, watch out cos you'll never know: There always might be an Italian emigrant nearby....

So many things, so little time

Just August in London (apart from a week in Scotland/Wales) is a little time for too many things.

For the whole month I kept dreaming way too much for my poor body to rest. I woke up sored by the violent intensity of my dreams: all the people and places of my (short) life mashed up in my mind's intense night life. Dreaming is necessary to digest reality but what if you've been overfed?

London's over stimulation took a bow in Orpheus' land for letting her the doors open.

According to the English language I've been taught at school, "city" is no person, thus the correct pronoun to use to address to London would be the neuter "it". But all the cities are women: their complication; their varieties but little conforming; their big hug - cuddling, welcoming, loose, unmindful, incumbent, suffocating, overwhelming. Villages are men: difficult to reach, simple to get to know, though still keeping secret corners and likely surprising outdoor routes.

London is a woman. It is one of those women whose personality you could get to know just little by little, partially mysterious but not hidden. There is always something new to discover about her, and even those part of her you think you know, well, they're ever changing and much more complex than it might look. She'll let you know her but she knows you won't be really able to catch up, even with a big effort. She is there anyway, blooming with restless activity; all over, whether you're curious or not.

"Lisboa é sò cantinhos"- Lisbon is but little corners. Lisbon is shy, she hides her treasures. She'll let you in but it's not for the masses. Milan is grey, many people don't like her. Once an old friend of mine said: "liking Milan is like falling in love for an ugly woman. Rome, instead, is a whore: she spreads her legs and hides nothing. She's wide open." Quite a definition.

A few days ago Wales-based playwright/dramaturg and friend Kaite O'Reilly said to me "I've always found it hard to work and think in London because it's so over stimulating". I couldn't agree more. In order to properly work, therefore think, London is spurring one's senses way too much and in too many directions. Especially if you know your time there is limited. It is not only fast but also and foremost hyper-offering. My existential issue - that could be summon up in the question "What to choose?" - got exasperated in London. And sometimes you feel like 80% of your energy is spent on keeping away from distractions and being focused on what you have or want to do, cos it's so easy to be blown away by randomly-encountered events or propositions.

Even in such conditions, I got to work on my projects and almost completed all the goals I had set.

I got to read at least one play a week: one about London (Pornography by Simon Stephens), then classical Greek tragedy, in preparation to September in Epidauros.

Aeschylus' Agamemnon: Clytemnestra's revenge over her husband who killed his and her own daughter. Euripides' Andromache: Hermione's jealousy causes her own despair. Aeschylus' Persians: a great army facing the worst defeats. And now Euripides' Orestes.

All the misery of mankind in a few pages. And these feminine figures...they're mesmerizing like a city map. Complicated, undismayed, unabashed, unreachable, quick-tempered, trigger-happy, fierce and brave...and desperate.

Wonder what city I am.