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.