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.