Rewriters - Five Questions To The Italian Producer Valeria Orani To Descover New York During Covid-Time

by Roberta Calandra

(Translation)

In a year as extreme as this, I would like to greet our readers with a valuable testimony that comes from New York City. A wish for new exchanges between cultures, peoples, and institutions, through the words of a woman who deals with this specifically: Valerian Orani, theater curator and producer, who worked in Italy for 30 years before moving to NYC in 2014. Here, she creates a relationship between the American market and contemporary Italian culture through several projects: Umanism (http://www.umanism.com), Amina (http://www.aminaproject.org), and IAPP (http://www.italianandamericanplaywrightsproject.com), dedicated to dramaturgy. In Italy, she is the artistic director of 369gradi production (http://www.369gradi.it).

Tell us how you got to New York City and why. When one does something so big, there is not always a well-defined reason. I think the reason lays more in the concept of action and determination: I raised the bar of my personal challenges to see if there was a limit, or maybe to show myself that I fear no limit. I wanted to live a concrete experience to transform my own environment for the better: I wanted to be an example of how we can be moved by things we do not like to make things better. Getting here was not easy. As usual, one thinks they have planned everything, but then reality kicks in and unexpected things happen. New York City is a place that keeps amazing you, it challenges you. Now, six years later, I am beginning to better understand how to look at this crazy city; I am finally beginning to feel its personality, to understand its thousand souls, and to have a little fun.

The biggest satisfaction of your journey up to last year… Managing to build beautiful projects which bring me joy and enthusiasm in complete independence, without any limit imposed by others or myself. This has been the biggest professional satisfaction of this journey. Naturally, there are also many private ones that have to do with my own life and my son.

The biggest obstacles? The cost of living. Before I got here, everyone was telling me how New York was very expensive, and I never truly considered it, but the reality is much worse. This has been one of the greatest traumas, but also the compass which has guided me in my New York education. My life has changed greatly since I have moved here, and the biggest change is linked to the way in which I perceive value. In our culture, we learn to judge value as positive or negative. In New York I learnt, not without difficulties, that these two things are not necessarily opposites, and that it is actually better to put them in relation with each other. I learnt that giving the right value to what one does, to time, to actions, to one’s talent, is a good practice which influences one’s relation with others and one’s perception of themselves.

What changed with covid and how are you reorganizing your work? In New York, theaters have been closed since March (https://rewriters.it/intervista-a-silvano-spada-ecco-la-sua-formula-delloff-off-theatre/), and events, concerts and movies have been suspended. It is also hard to talk about social safety nets because the society here is not based on the citizens’ well-being, but on their productivity. The response to the crisis following the pandemic was proactive. Many have left the city and its costly life and dimensioned their lives with more sustainable standards. Many reinvented themselves with new careers. It has been an intense couple of months. Besides the pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests and the general election have been very stressful and have shown a nation divided in half. Art and culture are deeply interconnected with the surrounding environment, and it is normal that artists have another job which have nothing to do with the arts. It is not surprising to meet artists who are also taxi drivers, waiters or salespeople. The news is backstage workers: they have come up with the most amusing jobs, such as tour managers who organized moves for people who left the city.

What is the atmosphere like in New York City today? The city that never sleeps has slowed down and, for the first time, even the subway shuts down from 1am to 5am. There are few people around, there are no tourists, you do not leave your apartment if it’s not necessary. New York today is showing its underground: poverty and desperation are emerging – they were always there but would get confused with everything else. However, I love the atmosphere in New York City now. Its most human dimension is showing, covid has eliminated (at least for now) the superfluous, you can feel the positive vibrations. One cannot feel, among those who stayed, any rush to go back to normal, but there is a strong feeling that the people are united in the journey to get to the other side with as little damage as possible. We all feel like we have been called to do our part in complying with the rules, in respecting the work of essential workers, in trusting Governor Cuomo, who asked for unimaginable sacrifices to get a hold of a situation that appeared to be impossible to tame. The City today looks nothing like the New York City one usually imagines. It is a new condition, not a permanent one for sure, in which we are all parts of a perfect organization. It is a great inspiration and great pride for us all. It was tough, but also important and a privilege.

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Vanity Fair (Italy) - Italians In The Us: "We Hope That Arrogance Will Be Banned From Now On"

by Simona Siri

(Translation):

Varied, multiform, made of people now naturalized American and therefore with the right to vote in the presidential elections, the Italian community in New York has never been so attentive to what is happening in politics at this time. The testimonies.

The announcement of Joe Biden’s victory, on Saturday, November 7th, was welcomed in many American cities by joyful celebrations and spontaneous gatherings in the streets. New York was no exception. Donald Trump’s hometown, which has a tense and perhaps unmendable relationship with the President, was the first to take it to the streets, to signal that Trump's defeat was experienced almost as the end of a dictatorship.

Although the President-in-Office keeps refusing to acknowledge the victory of his rival and cries - tweets, actually- about fraud and stolen elections, the majority of the population -a poll says 80%- recognizes that Joe Biden won and that therefore he will move in the White House starting January 20th, day of the oath. Preceded by so much enthusiasm, the democratic candidate finds himself in a situation that is far from easy: at the same time delegitimized by Trump and pressured by the huge expectations of those who see him as the man that will solve the problems of American society.

«I hope a social climate where the word has the right weight and arrogance is banned is coming», tells us Francesca Di Matteo, founder and CEO of "Strategica Comunicazione". She also puts her hopes in the reform of the health system and maybe, who knows, even in the resolution of the age-old gun problem.

«I didn’t sleep last night», writes by email Stefano Vaccara, editor of La Voce di New York, an online magazine that publishes -in both Italian and English- news targeted to the big Italian-American community since 2013. The anguish for the dizzy hang-up that seems to have no solution is in his words. «Trump is planning a coup. The situation is dire. Biden appears smiling and says not to worry; in the meantime, the other guy keeps purging the key roles to put incompetent figures but totally loyal to him, as he just did in the Pentagon and -it’s expected- in the FBI and the CIA. Of the two one: or Biden knows very well what is happening and is studying the counter-moves behind the scenes -but appears calm to avoid the worst from happening in the streets of America- or he and his Democratic advisors are delusionals who have not understood that Trump always does what he says», continues Vaccara -who wrote about Trump's authoritarian push in La Voce di New York back in January 2017.

«I think of myself as an independent", says Rosario Procino, owner of Ribalta pizzeria, the reference point of the Italian community especially on Sundays, when Ribalta becomes the place where soccer fans can watch together the games of the Italian football championship. He has American citizenship and voted. «I despise Trump as a person, I would have preferred a moderate Republican candidate or Michael Bloomberg: I ​​would have paid gold to see him run  for President. As an entrepreneur, I am skeptical about the fiscal policy that Joe Biden might adopt, but the scenario that lies ahead with the Democratic President and the Republican Senate seems to create a good balance, and the stock market will appreciate that too. I think that the reactions, the people pouring in the streets, were much more against Trump than an expression of satisfaction for Biden's victory ”.

Having different opinions, experiences, and ideas is the norm within a non-monolithic community. Valeria Orani, entrepreneur in the field of contemporary performing arts, is here with an 01 visa, the one issued to “extraordinary” talents. «The past few years have been very hard on us, the climate we have experienced has clearly been weighed down by divisive policies openly and shamelessly carried out by Trump,» she says. «I always thought that this Nation was a successful experiment of contemporary democracy, but it has revealed many flaws. There’re around 70 days from not to the moment Joe Biden is sworn in, and I’m not totally sure there’s no reason to not be afraid that something might happen. My desire is that of the many Americans who want to continue the long and slow path towards the respect for each and every human being, regardless of race or class. Healthcare, systemic racism, abysmal social inequality. Perhaps after these four years, the evidence of all this is even more clear; but as a European, as an Italian, I will never be able to fully understand some of the things that happen in the United States. I believe my hopes are only in part those of the Americans, but I have more faith in a politician than in an entrepreneur, for sure. And at the end of the day, he is not even an example of an overly brilliant entrepreneur».

«I will never forget the moment when they told me that Biden had become President,» says Semhar Ghebrenegus Salvati: who lives in New York it’s seven years and works in advertising for the fashion department. «The relief I felt then, mixed with the fear that this will not happen. My joy is even greater to know that Kamala Harris will be our Vice-President, it proofs that a better way is possible, and I am looking forward to her starting to work. Anyway, until I see Biden put his hand on the Bible and swear I won't believe it completely. Actually, I'm thinking of going to Washington for the inauguration and taking part in this historic moment».

For some, the crackdown on immigration, even legal given by Trump, to which the blocking of flights due to a pandemic was then added, was a source of stress and uncertainty and meant the impossibility of returning to Italy for the summer holidays and who knows. for those of Christmas what will happen. Fears and anxieties of which Ivana Lo Stimolo, founder of the New York Italian Women group is well aware, the true glue of an increasingly numerous and increasingly socially active group of women, at least before the arrival of the coronavirus. "The impossibility of traveling and visiting families of origin has affected many of us," he says. "Soon I will organize a virtual meeting to exchange views on these elections and to share the sense of liberation we feel right now".

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GQ Italia - Joe Biden president, what Americans expect now

by Flavia Caroppo 

November 9, 2020

Exactly four years after Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton, the story changes: the Biden-Harris era begins. With the promise of a more welcoming America and that it will return to give possibilities

For over 75 million people, the day Joe Biden became president of The United States was a four-year long-awaited moment. Exactly from the night of Tuesday, November 8, 2016, when Donald J. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, thus becoming the 45th president of the United States.

From Trump to Biden

That cold and wet night, to the tune of the Air Force One soundtrack (a 1997 film in which Harrison Ford is a heroic president of the United States), the newly elected Republican President took the stage set up in the Hilton Midtown hotel ballroom. and he promised the entire Trump family, its constituents, and the whole world: “I will be the president of all Americans. The forgotten of this country will no longer be forgotten ».

A few minutes earlier, three kilometers further west, on the big screens of the Javits Center, where the Democrats were headquartered (the same one that was used as a field hospital during the Covid-19 emergency), even the outgoing president Barack Obama was speaking to the thousands of New Yorkers who thronged the convention center and millions of other spectators. He too was making a promise, and he was asking his people for a commitment. That of continuing to give our best by working alongside our opponents to achieve, together, the good of all Americans. “It doesn't matter who wins or loses today,” Obama said on November 8, 2016. “What matters is that democracy and the common good win. It is the choices that each of us will make from now on, the ones that matter. One thing is certain: the sun always rises in the morning. And America will always be the largest country in the world ».

Thousands of people of all ages, races, creeds, nationalities, gender identities, who since yesterday have poured into the squares and streets of New York (and many other cities, in America and in the world) to replace the memory November 8, 2016 (and everything that followed) that of November 8, 2020, the Day One of the era Joe Biden / Kamala Harris.

We want "a great America, again, for everyone"

“We have kept faith with that democracy pact made with Barack Obama then, and with Joe and Kamala now. And I'm not just talking about the over 75 million voters, but those who have no voice because they didn't write “Americano” in their passport, despite having “AmeriHuman” encoded in their DNA ». Valeria Orani, Sardinian curator and producer, Roman by adoption and New Yorker for love (the one for Italian theater and culture), remembers the difficult choices she had to make in the last four years. The scenes of violence, racism, abuses, and injustices that she never wanted to be a spectator of. The doubts, the fear of not making it, the desire to go home.

“But it's the final result that matters. And the result is the hundreds of thousands of people who for over 24 hours have gathered peacefully in the streets and squares of New York (and many other American and world capitals), to celebrate the new president of the United States, Joe Biden and his deputy, Kamala Harris to renew faith in a better America, who shows the world that "doing the right thing" is possible, and is the only right thing to do to fight the most dangerous virus of all, that of 'intolerance".

With Valeria, under the statue of Garibaldi who watches over the thousand (almost 1500) gathered here in Washington Square park, there is also Tiziana Marcuccio, a Milanese communication professional, who in January 2017, in the first months of the Trump presidency made the big leap and moved to New York. «Today, finally, the emotional smog made of anger, fueled by a national policy of hatred and division based exclusively on the arrogance of the strongest and richest has dissipated. The political spring has blossomed, ”he says. “Now I expect an America that makes progress in protecting public health and the environment. May it once again become an example of welcome and possibility. Because this is what Joe and Kamala promised, that by working together we can do it. That armed with compassion and openness to the other we can make great not only America but the world, and give a better future to the whole of humanity ”.

Even Laura Campisi, a young and talented jazz singer from Palermo arrived in New York during the first term of Obama, spent in apnea these last four years. «I love this country, I love democracy and social justice. Discovering the existence of a racist, violent, fascist America was hard. I feared for the lives of minorities of all colors, for the survival of the civic sense of this great country, for national and personal security, of Joe, the American I love and who I married just a year ago, and of Eddy, our little dog. Today I am not afraid, I believe in America, in Joe Biden, in Kamala Harris, and in those who, like them, are committed to democracy. Together we can make America Great. Again. For everyone".

Read in Italian

Alley Oop Il Sole 24 Ore - A Coffea with Valeria Orani

Debora Mariotti in conversation with Valeria Orani

RadioX - In New York Live The Soul Of Contemporary Sardinia: Interview To Valeria Orani

by Cristina Marras

(Translation)

"Crossing the ocean, going so far, I suddenly felt completely Sardinian. As a first wish, I would have liked to be a link between travelers and my land. This is also because I saw ways of promoting Italy by other regions such as Puglia, Tuscany and Lazio, which were trying to talk about the territory and traditions in a more contemporary way. "

Is the reinterpretation of tradition today a cultural identity? How to convey the charm of a millenary culture outside the place of origin? How can we, starting from the cultural, historical and archaeological heritage of Sardinia, create a value that allows access to a competitive and contemporary market? These are some of the questions that the producer, curator and manager of culture and arts Valeria Orani, Sardinian but New Yorker by adoption, tried to answer with "Amina", a very complex project that aims at a new promotion of Sardinia internationally, aimed at rediscovering the island as a travel destination, far from the concept of hit and run tourism: «What moved this project was a question: what is identity? The second question was: is there a Sardinian word that indicates "identity"? The answer was no, because identity is a modern concept. However, there is something else that each of us carries with him around the world, which is always with us and that no one can steal from us: the soul. So I came to the idea that identity and soul are the same thing and that just like the soul, no one can steal our identity. So I decided to involve a series of visual and performance artists and work on this concept, asking them to do a research through a thought, a memory or a nostalgia, to be used as input for an artistic creation that they should have done from afar ... "

Valeria Orani talked about her project to the microphones of Extralive morning, interviewed by Cristina Marras.

Read and listen the interview in Italian

Artribune - From Sardinia To New York. “Amina’s” Journey, Art-Residency Project Curated By Valeria Orani

by Maurita Cardone

Translation

The Sardinian curator living in New York created a project which brings Sardinian artists to New York for a residence period, for a journey marked by exchange and culture.

Sometimes it is by going away that one finds attachment. This is what often happens to expats who, after leaving their homeland, find that they belong to her; and it is in this way that a desire, a need to bring something back, to give back to our motherland some of the love we took when we left, is born. It happened to theater organizer and curator Valeria Orani, born and raised in Cagliari and, since 2014, living in New York. In two decades worth of cultural projects, Orani had never dedicated any initiative to her motherland, but, in 2019, she launched Amina, an idea which creates a flux which comes and goes from Sardinia to New York (and vice versa) through art and culture, and which includes coming and going in its name as well. Amina, which translates to soul in Sardinian, is a project which brings together artists and motherland to create value through culture.

SARDINIA-NEW YORK ROUND TRIP. “AMINA” BY VALERIA ORANI

”Living abroad, I discovered a stronger bond with my motherland: my New York life has enhanced my Sardinian identity” recalls Orani. “So I started viewing identity as an elastic which brings you to where you are from the more you pull away. The word identity is, at the same, a controversial one though. I looked it up on the Sardinian dictionary and I found out it doesn’t exist except for as a translation of the Italian word. This made me realize that this concept does not exist in our heritage. It is a term referring to one’s roots, but one which was not necessary at that time. So I looked for a Sardinian word with a similar meaning, and this is how I got to the word ‘amina’ only to find that, looking at it in a mirror, it was its Italian counterpart”. A word in Sardinian at the beginning, and in Italian at the end: perfect to talk about the movement Valeria Orani wanted to see in the Sardinian artists who became part of the project. “Starting from the contradiction of identity made by being far away”, Orani says, “I was interested in understanding what is left of this identity once an artist comes up with something outside of their motherland, but nevertheless taking inspiration from something coming from that same motherland”. From this came the idea of tracking down the Cagliari-born curator Fabio Acca, and to give him the task of selecting the artists who were going to go far away and then go back, and to bring stylist and artist Antonio Marras on board as well. Orani already worked with Marras, and she defined him as “an extraordinary example of this idea, since he has worked so much out of Sardinia, but Sardinia remains inside his entire production”. Last May, Marras’ first play was scheduled at the La MaMa theater in New York. However, coronavirus came about: the play was postponed indefinitely, and it will need to be reimagined taking into account the possible future restrictions on public performances.

AMINA’S ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE IN NEW YORK

In the Fall of 2019, however, the three artists chosen by Acca had already spent time researching and residing in New York: it was the time when they had to go far away, in which New York was stimulus and contemporary. The three residences should have then gone into the screening of a performative and artistic result, to be made in Sardinia. The final project should have taken place in Fall 2020 and it would have included live performances. The current emergency and the social distancing rules have forced the curators to rethink this part of the project as well. “At the moment, the idea of an in-person event is not excluded. We will have to see how things go” Orani explained, “but for now we decided to dedicate a short documentary to each of the three experiences, to include both the research conducted in New York and the giving back to Sardinia”. The first artist flying to New York, last September, was the musician and choreographer Maurizio Saiu, who spent a month in the city working on a project titled There is still a little light in my sky, inspired by Maria Lai an her embroidered books. Saiu, who knew the Sardinian artist and used to work with her, started from conversations and reflections made with her, and in her home, now home to the Maria Lai Archives, will resume his artistic residence as soon as possible. It was then Alessandro Carboni’s turn, visual artist and performer, who worked on Contèxt-Ere, a reflection on the idea of weaving and loom as models of a cosmic mind, in relation to visual arts, cartography-making processes and scenic space. The artist puts the modular structures of Sardinian textile production with the elementary units of American minimalism into dialogue, developing a performative practice based on the handling of wool and geometrical shapes. Finally, last December, it was Cristian Chironi’s turn, an artist whose work stems from an interest for traditional Sardinian constructions, such as the Domus de Janas and the Nuraghi, and ends with Le Corbusier and Tadao Ando. His New York project, Image & Imagination, is a new take on traditional Sardinian housing through the study of more recent materials and techniques, with a special attention to the urban context and its vertical architecture, signs and billboards. In conclusion of the residence period, each of the artists was the protagonist of a public event in which they recounted the art and their work, and they shared their artistic journey.

AMINA ARTISTS IN NEW YORK, THEIR RETURN TO SARDINIA AND CORONAVIRUS

Forced to a comprehensive reorganization, now the going back phase begins. The current uncertainty gives us the chance to deepen a reflection which was, from the very beginning, one of the foundations of Amina: how to develop a relationship with Sardinia which goes beyond seasonal tourism and is able to establish synergies between the territory and culture to create experiences. Limitations to movement offer the opportunity to begin a more direct dialogue, maybe even an exclusive one, with the local communities to which the project wants to bring the results of the work done in New York. Valeria Orani calls them “restitution actions” which started off as open performances for an international audience, but will probably end up being done in front of a much more local audience and through a video. The process is still developing.

AMINA: RECOUNTING SARDINIAN CULTURE TO THE WORLD

The desire to recount Sardinian culture to the world remains, as a result, the last step of the project will be bringing to Sardinia a groups of international buyers and influencers who are interested in knowing the island, its traditions and culture under a light which is different than that bringing thousands of tourists to its beautiful Mediterranean beaches. The moment chosen for this trip is carnival, when the Barbagia becomes animated by Dionysian rituals of ancient origins. “The idea is promoting Sardinia through its identity” says Orani, “and show its ancestral nature. We want to achieve this through a way of traveling which is that of the artist. An idea which might be summed up in the slogan ‘travel as an artist’, which is a concept that can be applied to other places other than Sardinia”. Cultural tourism which puts forth the research and wonder of discovery even in one’s own home, which gains new relevance now that international travel is restricted. Orani concludes: “this crisis is confirmation that the intuition inspiring this project presents itself as urgency now, the journey seen as immersion in different customs and culture, or even the re-discovery of one’s own motherland as proximity tourism, are the basis from which we can restart. We can even expand the concept of cultural and experience tourism, which are necessary for the contamination of all arts, including the art of hospitality”. We will learn to travel again, and maybe art will be our guide.

Read in Italian

Fattiditeatro/Amukinaworld - interview Valeria Orani

Simone Pacini in conversation with Valeria Orani

Liminateatri

by Patrizia Vitrugno

(Translation)

Precariousness as a lifestyle, as a resource, as evolution and revolution. This is the challenge that Valeria Orani, producer, organizer, a free spirit of the Italian theater and a visionary, decided to take when she moved to New York in 2014. Because, in her own words, “it’s right in this state of precariousness that talent if you have it, can emerge and break loose. Her talent is very lively. You see it in the energy she sends out when she speaks, in her warm and cheerful laugh mixed with the apparent rigorousness she gets from her Sardinian background. 

She smiles when she tells about her move to the Big Apple using a powerful metaphor: “I left a yacht to land on a raft. I’m using the word raft because it is something very precarious that could sink in no time. However, I’m working to make it bigger and more stable thanks to a few plastic bottles that I now and then find along the way. Surely in my journey, I could come across a big yacht ready to take me on board, or I could land on the ground, I don’t know, everything is continuously evolving and it is all very exciting. Now I know that if anything should happen to me, I would be able to start over again quickly. 

Her vision of life is inspiring and revolutionary. I have been working for over 30 years and I have always thought that you need to create a future for yourself. Ironically since becoming a mother, I don’t think there is a future to build anymore just the present and it’s terrible. However, if you stop and consider this and start to live in the present, things get better.”

We are speaking about the world of artists and people who have made this world their job. Just like Valeria that after having worked as producer and organizer for numerous public and private artistic organizations, in 2003 decided to establish a company, 369gradi focused on the production, promotion, and distribution of contemporary culture and on innovative artists such as Punta Corsara and Lucia Calamaro.
369gradi becomes the bridge between Italy and the US when Valeria moves to New York to test the feasibility of a new platform aimed at connecting the US market with the Italian contemporary culture. Based on this in 2015 she sets up Umanism NY. Thanks to the partnership with the E. Martin Segal Center directed by Frank Hentschker, Valeria launches the Italian & American Playwrights Project, a biennial initiative focused on the dissemination of Italian contemporary dramaturgy in the US and of American playwrights in Italy. Since its first edition, the project enjoys the support of the Italian Cultural Institute in New York and of RAI3 (media partner).

“ This project gives me the opportunity to create a dialog with American organizations that host our events featuring special guests such as Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari of Teatro delle Albe or Stefano Massini before his success with Lehman Brothers.
“We are also very proud to announce that the Italian & American Playwrights Projects was awarded the 2019 Prize for the promotion and dissemination of Italian culture and language abroad (Premio per la Traduzione Fondo per il potenziamento della cultura e della lingua Italiana all’estero 2019) and listed first on the official announcement by the Italian Ministry for Culture (MIBACT).”

“On December 18 we closed our first two editions with a presentation of a new collection of plays “New Plays from Italy Vol. 3 published by Martin E. Segal Theater Publications curated by Frank Hentschker and myself. The collection features some of the most innovative and exciting authors of the Italian contemporary theater scene. During the event, we staged a reading in English of the full play “Event Horizon” by Elisa Casseri winner of the Riccione Prize (one of the event’s partners). The play was translated by Adriana Rossetto and was directed by Marco Calvani. We are now working on the next edition. We are always trying to set new more ambitious targets for our research into dramaturgy and we can tell you there will be some exciting news.”

How is the Italian dramaturgy doing?

“Art doesn’t stop, it doesn’t care about what the critics or organizations do.

In Italy, I think there is a lack of curiosity because dramaturgy is only what you see in the theater,  if it is not there, nobody knows it exists. This is wrong. Here in New York, dramaturgy and shows are two separate things. In Italy, it’s all about the same authors, probably because organizations are more focused on getting public funding to produce shows than on creating hubs for growth. This is a situation generated by the system. Maybe we should hope for a total breakdown and a reset of the whole system.” 
Reset is another recurring term in Valeria’s story. Reset is a prerequisite of precariousness. It became the vital lymph for Valeria’s job that could no longer go on in the way she was doing it in Italy. It needed a reset. Thus, the decision of a fresh start, a new life more in synch with her inner self.

“Since moving to New York, I have wiped out completely my years in Rome. It looks like they never happened. On the other hand, I feel more Sardinian now than ever, I have also rediscovered the accent that I had lost or mixed with the Roman way of speaking. Lately, I think a lot about my being far from Rome. Distance gives way to things like nostalgia, makes you rethink and elaborate on your links with your family and search for sensations and flavors that can fill that void.”

The relationship with Sardinia has become stronger since she lives in New York. This can be seen in all her latest projects, the most recent one being My Heart I’m suffering. What can I do for you? by Antonio Marras that opened the 2019-20 season of Teatro Elfo Puccini in Milan.

“This project too comes from a reset and a return to production, an activity I had abandoned when I moved here. My Heart is completely different from any other theater project I have done, particularly from a production perspective. There is a need to give voice to the urgency of an eclectic artist, a well-respected, visionary and talented fashion designer that was already experimenting with performing arts in his fashion shows.”

This project is best described in Ferdinando Bruni’s definition of it as a “magazine” meaning that it is not just a show but a collection of frames bound together by Marco Angelilli’s choreographies in the same way as Marras’ clothes are made of different pieces of fabric sewn together by highly visible seams.    

My task has been to understand what this urgency was and to defend it. In the past I defended the urgency of other very talented artists who, however, had a different purpose, more connected with their own path. In this case, there is a completely different dimension, far from the usual dynamics. 

Another project that links Valeria to her native land is journey encompassing theater, hospitality and identity that can be defined in a single word: Soul.

“Distance is an ever-present theme in my research. Every output that distance produces is always interesting from my point of view. This feeling is then connected with identity, a strange and controversial concept, somewhat useless until the modern age, also because our identity is always a mix of identities.

So, I decided to bid for a grant by the Sardinia Region funded by the European Union’s Identity Lab 2 Program (PO FESR 2014-2020) with Fabio Acca, a producer, and expert of dance and contemporary performing arts. 

We asked ourselves what could be defined as identity and how it could be found in the work of artists who live far from their native land. Because the irony about identity is that the more distant you are the more it follows you and sticks to you.”

So, this is how Amina >Anima Soul was born. The project is articulated into 4 stages. The first one “Sardinia-New York-Sardinia” curated by Fabio Acca is a New York residency for three Sardinian artists who will each carry on their personal research inspired by a Sardinian topos. A first synthesis of the artists’ research processes will be presented after the end of each residency.

The first artist was Alessandro Carboni with his project Contèx-Ere based around the traditional weaving on a manual loom called “Flame of Nule” from the name of the village in Sardinia where this art was developed. 

Alessandro’s objective is to find possible declinations of the concept of threads and weaving with visual arts, geographical mapping, and scenic space.

The next artists to come to New York will be Cristian Chironi who, with his project “Imagine & Imagination” will explore Sardinian traditional housing through the study of materials and of the most recent building techniques. 

The third artist will be Maurizio Saiu who, with his project Sa dom’è s’orcu, will use the interaction between dance and voice to draw an evocative picture of his native Sardinia.

The second stage of the project is linked to the show “My Heart” by Antonio Marras that will be performed in New York in May at La MaMa Theatre, one of the most important theaters in the city’s contemporary scene.  The third stage, taking place also in May, is a Curatorial Food Program that will bring to New York two projects: one by Enrico Costanza a culinary gardener and an expert in the cross-contamination between culinary art and contemporary art, and one by Laura Sechi, a culinary expert whose research focuses on the fusion of different types of food and tastes.

The fourth and last stage of this project is called “The Journey” and will be an actual trip to Sardinia, to the remote places that have inspired the work of the artistic residencies in New York in the first stage. A selected number of participants – journalists, curators, art professionals, influencers including young people expert in social media and web – will be able to meet in the places that have inspired this project, engaging in conversations on how to positively promote these areas not through mass tourism, something Sardinian dislike, but through a new type of involvement that will have to be investigated.

The answers are the expected outcome of this project, ambitiously focused around the concept of “Soul”.

“The word Amina means Soul in the Sardinian dialect which reads backward as “Anima”, the Italian word for Soul.  It’s a round trip also visually. Our guests will leave the US with a “soul” and will come back with a Sardinian “Amina”. At least, this is what we hope will happen! It’s a great opportunity for me as it could open a new phase in my professional life”.

The concept of soul is not accidental in Valeria’s professional life.
“Soul is our essence. You can call it in many ways but it’s something that defines you. In the end we are 21 grams. Everything I do is connected to spirituality. Also, the mechanism that allows you to stop your mind and act is connected to spirituality, in my case I call it Buddhism. If what we do doesn’t embrace something deeper, nothing makes sense”.

Valeria arrived in New York thanks to a Visa for extraordinary skills.  While remembering this detail, she still laughs, almost in disbelief.

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Mi Tomorrow - Valeria Orani, The Theater And The Big Apple. “That New Year’s Eve In Milan …

by Davide Mamone

(Translation)

It was New Year’s Eve in 1990 when Valeria Orani first discovered the streets of Milan. She was working on the end-of-the-year show that however finished before the midnight: “I didn’t know what to do and I hadn’t made any plans so I ended up in Duomo Square”. Thirty years later, that young girl from Sardinia lost in the streets of Milan has become a theater producer in New York. She is the organizer of an event taking place at the Italian Institute of Culture during the week dedicated to the Italian language featuring Italian actress Isabella Ragonese. 

She knew she wanted to work in Theater since she was 14 and lived in Cagliari. However, it was only when moved from Sardinia that she felt she had started something that was her own. “In Milan, the city that “lives” representing the more elegant image that the city developed after the years of the “Milano da bere (Milan to drink)* I collected many stories that stimulated my imagination”. Her master was Fulvio Fo, brother of the famous Dario Fo. “Theater made me realize that everything is ephemeral, even richness: this is the foundation of my love for this job”. 

She started as an assistant and organizer in a theater company. These were the years where in Milan, even if you were young, you could make a lot of money with culture. Everybody called me “the child” because I was always the youngest in the company. The youngest yet with a lot of responsibilities.: “My challenge was to make them accept the idea that although, younger I was their boss”. The turning point was when I met the actor Alessandro Benvenuti.

“I spent my years in Milan trying to understand what I wanted to become: thanks to Alessandro I finally understood it. After the stint in Milan, Valeria moves to Rome where she becomes executive producer in Benvenuti’s company. Here she understands her vision of theater. “ Merging innovation with tradition: I could never stand the duality between rich and poor and I believe there shouldn’t be borders between the two”

The years in Rome are busy ones. In 2003 she founds an association, that eventually is incorporated into a company, 369gradi. The company is presented as a case study at the first edition of Good Practice of Paolo Grassi School of Theater in Milano, “a place where budding artists could move their first steps”. In 2009 she takes over Benvenuti’s company. In 2014 she takes the plunge, a little accidentally: Manhattan. “I saw in this city the opportunity to widen my artistic vision”.

Valeria moves to New York after a tourist trip. She is fascinated by “the artistic turmoil of the pop culture”, but when she moves there she is a little overwhelmed. The idea of New York I had was very different from the reality I found there. New York is a truly difficult city but it has a quality that I haven’t found anywhere else not even in Milan: it is dialogs with people who are able to live in it and rewards the brave”. 

In New York, Valeria continues to work for his Italian company and establishes Umanism, a consultancy company that focuses on culture and that collaborates with partners such as the Italian Institute of Culture. “I haven’t still been able to fully understand this city, it certainly is not so open to innovation as I thought. However, it is an environment where you don’t have any other alternative but to grow”. Valeria present is split between Manhattan and Milano, where she is producing a new show with Antonio Marras. What about tomorrow? “I’m intrigued by the idea of going back to Cagliari, I have been traveling a long time”. However, I’m also thinking about Milan that is now my new point of reference in Europe”.

AT THE ITALIAN INSTITUTE OF CULTURE 

“The show “On a Solitary Beach” is a voyage in tribute to the Italian language in the theater, and, in particular, to Camilleri”. The event, that took place at the Italian Institute of Culture in New York, is part of “The Week of the Italian Language in the World” ending tomorrow. Actress Isabella Ragonese from Palermo was the protagonist of the event organized by Valeria and part of the Italian Playwrights Project. 

THE ANECDOTE 

Milan as she knew it as a girl was full of anecdotes. She remembers one in particular with a smile: a time when Fulvio and Dario Fo, Giustino Durano and Mario Carotenuto spent the night dressed as sheiks. They did not change after the show and took 20 cabs with 20 ballerinas pretending to want to book hotel rooms like that”. “It did not end well, they were taken to the police station” 

THE NEW MILAN

In the last months Valeria increased her visits to Milan for the production of the show “My heart I’m suffering, what can I do for you” by Antonio Marras. “It feels like going back to the little girl from Cagliari in 1990” 

*a description coined during the 80s that originated as a slogan for commercials but that soon became a byword for a milieu where, under the sleek glittering surface of fashion, hot spots and nightlife, a world of unprincipled young go-getters, businessmen and corrupt politicians started emerging.

 Read in Italian

International Voices Project - Interview with the curator Valeria Orani

PAC - “Le Albe” in New York and other fragment of dramaturgy: interview to Valeria Orani

by Renzo Francabandera

(Translation)

There you are, after spending quite a few hours on a plane, on a new continent. Your cab leaves the airport and drives along numbered streets. Incredibly tall towers, bright LEDs, store windows, food vendors, the river of people, the river. Maybe this is what they saw when they arrived. 

Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari, founders and artistic directors of Teatro delle Albe, will be in New York on December 13 and 14 for a special edition of  The Italian Playwrights Project, curated by Valeria Orani and Frank Hentschker.

A two-day conversation with readings by Ermanna Montanari from Teatro delle Albe’s latest production, Love’s Faithful (fedeli d’amore) – A Polyptych in Seven Panels for Dante Alighieri (translated into English by Thomas Simpson).
“Cantiere Dante” will be followed by the Divine Comedy 2017-2021 (at Ravenna Festival, Matera-Basilicata 2019 and Timisoara 2021) and “The sky over Kibera”, an adaptation of the Divine Comedy that will be staged in the slum of Nairobi thanks to Avsi. For “Love’s Faithful” and “Va’ Pensiero”, Ermanna Montanari has been shortlisted as best actress for the Ubu Prize 2018.

During the conversations and readings on December 13-14 Ermanna Montanari and Marco Martinelli will dialog with curators of the Italian Playwrights Project Valeria Orani - Director of Umanism New York and of 369gradi, Italy - and Frank Hentschker, Director of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center-Graduate Center CUNY. The conversation will be moderated by Federico Rampini, journalist, writer, US Bureau Chief of La Repubblica.

This two-day event organized in partnership with La MaMa Theatre headed by Mia Yoo (Tony Award in 2018), Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò–New York University headed by Stefano Albertini and the Italian Institute of Culture of New York headed by Giorgio Van Straten, is part of the second edition of the Italian Playwrights Project. The first edition of the Italian Playwright Project, an initiative created in New York in 2015 to promote the Italian dramaturgy hosted a special event in 2016 dedicated to Stefano Massini.
We interviewed Valeria Orani.

Valeria, what is the sunrise like in New York? You must have seen many of them with the jat-lag when you moved there?

Thanks Renzo, I’m really happy to answer this question. Sunrise here in NYC is the color of gold. Literally, when the sun rises it is so golden that everything is washed in gold. I have seen many sunrises, because of jet-lag and because I usually wake up very early.

And after the American Playwright Project last year, this year you got “Le Albe” (Albe in Italian means “sunrise”– note of the translator) to come to New York from Italy to round-off 2018. Ermanna e Marco.... a nice present for Newyorkers

Ermanna e Marco are a wonderful present for anybody who has been lucky enough to meet them. I feel priviledged and I’m happy to host them in New York for two appointments at La MaMa Theatre on December 13 and at Casa Italiana NYU the day after.
The program consists of two days of conversations on Marco Martinelli’s dramaturgy and on the artistic path of Le Albe with the participation of Frank Hentschker, Director of the Segal Center and associate curator of the project, Allison Cornish, Professor at NYU, expert on Dante studies and Vice President of Dante Society, Federico Rampini, U.S. Bureau Chief of la Repubblica. The panel will draw a parallel between the contemporary society and Dante’s.
During the two-days event, Ermanna will read some passages from “Love Faithfulf” and the Canto XXXIII of the Divine Comedy (in Italian with English supertitles).

The first day of the event, there will also be a reading in English: Under Marco Martinelli’s direction, Rocco Sisto will interpret a passage from Rumore di Acque (Noise of Water) translated by Thomas Simpson.
The Italian Playwrights Project runs every two years. This is the second edition. In the first year, short excerpts of pre-selected texts are presented. During the second year these texts are translated in full and the appointment with the public includes a meeting with a representative author of the Italian scene. The first year we hosted Stefano Massini. Our invitation came at the same time as Sam Mendes' intention to produce Lehman Trilogy, which will soon be staged here in NY after London.

From the Italian Playwrights Project a fruitful dialogue with the New York scene has begun for Massini. PlayCo, a major off-Broadway production, after our meeting, decided to stage “Intractable Woman”, which premiered last September.

The New York scene completely or almost completely ignores the contemporary Italian panorama, especially as regards live arts. Luck must be built and helped. The intent of the Italian Playwrightis Project is precisely to contribute in this sense.

What do you think is the profound theme of which the Teatro delle Albe is the bearer and which can interest a city like New York?

Let's start with the work that Le Albe dedicates to Dante.

The contemporaneity of the contents of the Divine Comedy is certainly a theme that touches the sensitivity of the entire intellectual world, including the American one.

Cantiere Dante is an excellent starting point to spark interest and collaboration with the USA. Like all projects, it looks to the future. With Le Albe we are experiencing the start of a path that will develop over the next two years with professional and academic structures and which, starting from New York, will touch other stages such as Pennsylvania and Chicago.

And you, as a cultural programmer, who come from the school of Fulvio Fo, what do you think it means to program culture in society? Do you think there is really a lot of distance between America and Italy? And is New York really America?

Fulvio Fo taught me the role that an organizer must know how to support and the responsibility he has towards artists and art as a cultural vehicle with the society that surrounds us. This attention contains the meaning and urgency. Programming culture through theater or dramaturgy is to universally translate the artist's intimate urgency to tell a part of himself or an intimate vision of her. In a historical moment in which anyone feels authorized to have their priorities poured into the world, the role of those who promote culture becomes more delicate, because the responsibility is also to know how to recognize what is really worth transmitting.

I believe that New York is not America, just as I believe that Italy is not Europe.

The distance between New York and Italy is certainly great. The most obvious difference for me is the perception of one's own value, even economic. Promoting contemporary Italian culture means filling an important void but also knowing how to do it to meet a need that is more Italian than American. With this perspective, the risk and responsibility double, but it is worth it.

You have also recently been the producer of Marras's “crazy” and grandiose scenic challenge. What has this enterprise added to your path?

Anyone who knows my work knows that for a long time I have dedicated myself to the dialogue between artistic disciplines. 369gradi was born precisely to bring together artists with different origins. “My heart I am suffering. What can I do for you? was born first of all as a performance, site specific in the former Folonari Cellars of Brescia to support an exhibition by Antonio Marras, a multifaceted artist who uses his success in fashion as a pretext to express himself in the arts. Marras' talent, enthusiasm and "madness" have managed to involve a team of great value and recognized professionalism. A production that involves more than thirty people including performers and collaborators, all literally enraptured and enthusiastic about what we are managing to build together. A difficult project, because it was born big, started now - after the preview in Sardinia brought to the stage thanks to the Cedac Circuit - to debut in the national premiere next autumn 2019.

However, I would not like to call this a challenge. Antonio Marras approaches the theater as a possible place to be able to express his vision, as he already does in other artistic environments, as well as to reiterate that there can be no borders, discrimination, even in the arts.

As a programmer from two continents, does it take more courage to leave, to stay or to return? And the challenge is to remain humanist, as well as human?

The first time I left I was 19. By now my life is made up of departures rather than permanence. I don't know the courage to stay; leaving I consider a natural status of the life I have chosen. Courage is my personal challenge in putting myself in crisis by responding to my tendencies with strong countertendencies. I am convinced that contemporary humanism passes precisely from recognizing the imperfect nature that belongs to us, transforming it every time we have the opportunity, a concrete action and a great encouragement that is transmitted to me by my daily Buddhist practice. 

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RadioX - At Teatri Massimo (Cagliari) the premier of "Mio Cuore io sto soffrendo" - Interview to Valeria Orani

Summary

At Teatro Massimo comes the premiere of the show “Mio Cuore io sto soffrendo, cosa posso fare per te?" debut as director of the celebrity fashion-stylist Antonio Marras. We talked about it in the studio in Extralive morning with Valeria Orani, curator of 369gradi production

Videolina / Fuori Sede - Valeria Orani

by Andrea Frailis

Summary

“Enfant terrible” of the 80’s in Cagliari, today (Valeria Orani) is an appreciated and sought-after cultural manager in New York where she organizes, curates and manages artistic events.

Valeria Orani is the protagonist of today's episode of "Fuori Sede", the Videolina program that tells the stories of Sardinian emigrants around the world.

In the interview by Andrea Frailis, directed by Ettore Marongiu and coordinated by Luisanna Pala, Valeria admits that the theater has saved her life (…)

watch (in Italian)