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.
