Il Piccolo - Trump’s America as Seen from the Inside According to Will Eno, Today’s Beckett

by Roberto Canziani

(Translation)

From tomorrow until Sunday, at the Sala Bartoli, Francesco Mandelli will interpret the neurosis, the instability and the loneliness of the US.

There was a time when the latest of American theater would immediately reach Italy. Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, or David Mamet would write something, and one would find it a couple of months later in Italy. Now, Italy has become more scared, more cautious, more narrow-minded. More absolutist.

And yet, Will Eno, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, is one of those authors who are worth knowing, because he gives us a sense of what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic, in Trump’s America.

From tomorrow until the 19th (Sunday), at Rossetti’s Sala Bartoli, Proprietà e atto, third and last chapter of an “American” trilogy, will be portrayed. Over the years, actors Elio Germano (Thom Pain, 2011) and Isabella Ragonese (Lady Gray), participated in the trilogy with two memorable monologues shown at Mittelfest. It is up to popular MTV personality Francesco Mandelli (of I soliti idioti and Quelli che il calcio), together with the young and talented director Leonardo Lidi, to add the third piece to this puzzle giving us a picture of America as seen from the inside, with its neurosis and instability. And in some of its loneliness: in fact, Permanent Exile, Monologue for a Slightly Foreign Man is the subtitle of the play.

“Monologue is the form of expression in which I find myself the most. I find it exciting that one single voice is the one directing the entire orchestra of thoughts. This way, writing can be powerful but, at the same time, elegant.” Will Eno said so during a brief stay in Rome, when the determination of two intuitive ladies of Italian theater, Bam Teatro’s Marcella Crivellenti (who produced the three shows) and Valeria Orani (who created the project which is shipping the Italian and American dramaturgies across the Atlantic) made it possible for him to know Italy. And for us to know him.

“I had never thought of these three works as a trilogy – the author explained – but now that I’ve seen them together, played in a different language, I have to say it works. I realize, as I reconsider them together, that I am exactly in the present, and each and every time I feel like something exciting is about to happen.”

Eno’s writing is not mad about psychology like that of his colleagues who only write thinking about Broadway and profit. His characters are never fully defined: in order to complete them, to give them a meaning, one must always use the audience’s collaboration and imagination. That is to say, of different people who see different things, but find in the words they hear a common currency, a shared dream.

“It is precisely because of this that I think the best spot to watch my works is the very last row at the end of the theater – he added. Because from there, one can see the actor on stage, but also the whole audience, and this makes sense. There is much more humanity in the parterre than there is behind the scenes. What keeps fascinating me about theater is its ability to unite people.”

Press has often defined Will Eno as “the Beckett of contemporary theater”, thus evoking the innovation and confusion in the description of the scene introduced by the Irish Nobel Laureate some seventy years ago. And yet, the sense and sentiment enveloping Eno’s works are profoundly American and, to be more precise, from New York.

“If I think about the first thing I’ve ever written – he concludes – well, it is a torn piece of paper, that is the amount of strength I used to press my pencil to get something out of me. Now, at 54, I finally understand how writing works. One must really want to get something out of oneself, but with the pressure one has to keep it inside.” It really sounded like something Beckett would say. An American Beckett, and a contemporary one.

Hystrio - Writing theater: art and economy on the two sides of the Atlantic

by Roberto Canziani

Translation

Italian and American Playwrights is the international project created by Valeria Orani which revolves around moving authors between the two countries in order to give support, independence and economic sustainability to the art of the scene. Because beauty does not mean demonizing business.

Two continents. Actually, two different cultural planets where different coordinates apply. To me, America and Europe, but to be more precise, the US and Italy.

Italian and American Playwrights Project is the title of the initiative focusing on contemporary dramaturgy of the two countries while working as a ferry; not with old-fashioned ocean liners or adventurous regatta boats, but with contemporary tools and market analyses.

At the corner of 422E and 82nd, in New York, one can find Umanism NY, a cultural company with an ambition: support art and creativity, and especially Italian art and creativity, launching them into the principles of economic independence and sustainability which define the American cultural market – and every other American market.

At the crossroads between Italian Humanism and the very much Anglo-Saxon idea of humanism, Umanism NY was founded by Valeria Orani, who is originally from Sardinia and a businesswoman with strong experience in theater organization (she is artistic director, in Italy, of 369gradi). She chose to follow in footsteps of all those Italian immigrants who decided to plant new seeds in the world. Orani said it is time to stop whining and complaining about the lack of sensitivity and funds dedicated by the Italian government to her field, and instead to develop a business-like idea of culture. It is, in fact, one of the core components of the historic and geographic DNA of Italy and Italians, but it also needs to stop antagonizing the concept of business. Italian American Playwrights (now at its second edition) is the project which absorbed all her energies in the past few months in order to give stability and solidity to a double platform of dramaturgical visibility. On the one hand, Italian authors who, thanks to Umanism NY’s translations, can see their work brough to the attention of American buyers; on the other, American authors, also enjoying the translation process, who are exposed to the Italian scene, so hard to reach and so full of language barriers.

In a double international game, which came to include the Martin E. Segal Theater Center with its director Frank Hentschker, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York and Rai Radio3 as media partner, the most recent works of Fabrizio Sinisi (La grande passeggiata), Elisa Casseri (L’orizzonte degli eventi), Armando Pirozzi (Un quaderno per l’inverno) and Giuliana Musso (Mio eroe) crossed the Ocean. At the same time, a sample of new American dramaturgy reached Italy: a selection revolving around multiculturalism, intrinsic in American DNA, and all by women authors.

Mariana Carreño King (Miss 744890), Amy Herzog (The Great God Plan) and Cori Thomas (When January Feels Like Summer) were the three American authors who emerged from this new edition, after a series of evaluations of the Italian and American advisory boards weighted their characteristics with methods similar to those used in advanced marketing. Translatability, originality, interculturality, being of interest to the public, potential for production and personal preference are the factors which are considered to select potential candidates.

The three projects were presented in one night at the Teatro Vascello in Rome as scenic readings in Italian and with the participation of the authors and they showed a face of America which is quite different from the one emerging from imported movies and musicals. They presented settings such as prisons, where the troubled main character of Miss 744890 is locked up. They talked about interracial dynamics and global warming, which are also part of the future of Europe, in When January Feels Like Summer. And they offered present reflections on sexual harassment and assault experienced as children in The Great God Plan.

As opposed to many Italian works, American dramaturgy is strongly linked to the process of contemporary and immediate storytelling, which builds plots with a decisively strong hold. These characteristics – says Orani, who followed the Project in every aspect and step – are able to interact with the market without prejudice and, most of all, without waiting around for government funding to give them life.