the analysis
twelve o’clock, March 18, 2021 – 10:32
of Enrico Fiore
Pat times, during the previous thirteen years of his life, we had to ascertain that the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia suffered above all for the lack of an identity. In the billboards that gradually offered it was not possible to see either a project, nor a common thread, nor a relevant spectacular substance. In short, the ability to choose between the necessary shows and the useless shows was lacking on the basis of a political (in the noble sense of the adjective) and cultural (in the Latin sense of the adjective, deriving from the verb, colere, which means cultivating ).
Anow, faced with the fact that the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia will be called Campania Teatro Festival, we must note that the identity is no longer even in the name. And it is not just a question of nominalism.
The Napoli Teatro Festival Italia was born through a ministerial announcement that allocated adequate public funds to the most convincing of the projects presented by the capital cities rich in a particularly significant theatrical history. And it is no coincidence, therefore, that the first to win the Festival in question was Naples, to which, then, it was decided to leave the review permanently, abolishing the rotation provided for by the announcement.
In a nutshell, we were talking about a Festival characterized first of all by the precious specificity that our city boasts in the theatrical field and, secondly, by the need for that specificity to turn into an event such as to leave an imprint on the national dimension. Now, together, the specificity and the national dimension are abandoned. There remains a new name that, to put it in a nutshell, translates the hat put on the chair of the spectacular programming by the president of the Campania Region, who does not miss an opportunity to flaunt to the four winds that he will guarantee the money for the Festival, as if it came from his pockets and were not, however, the product of taxes paid by citizens.
However, he was forced to note that the regionalist vision of De Luca and Ruggero Cappuccio, in the fifth year of direction of the Festival, abundantly shows the string, as he had already shown it in the past. The words used by Cappuccio about the distribution of the Festival’s events throughout the region are exactly the same as those used by Franco Dragone, the meteor director of the 2016 edition. other occasions – the famous (or rather infamous) decentralization of the seventies.
The Campania Region, through its officials in charge, distributed among the local actors a certain number of squares, that is, replicas of their shows to be performed in towns, villages and districts scattered here and there. And net of possible patronage contaminations, the operation usually resulted in interventions halfway between paternalism and colonialism. They arrived – dropped from above in remote places, and in social and cultural contexts absolutely unprepared to receive and understand them – installations, often intellectualistic, completely foreign to the traditions and problems of those populations.
In this regard, dear, unforgettable Mico Galdieri, the prince impresario (he was, to be clear, the producer of Roberto De Simone), told an anecdote that was both amusing and enlightening. Arriving with one of his shows in one of the decentralized towns, he found it completely deserted: there was, yes, the stage set up in the square, but no one passed in the streets, and no one was looking out on the balcony or behind the window panes. Then, having met a lonely old man, Galdieri and the company asked him why his fellow villagers had gone away. And that: But quanno maie, they are all cc! Nun ‘and see, but they are there. Look good ‘ncopp’ ‘e balcune,’ and see what kind of casette? I know ‘chiene’ and pummarole fracete. ‘And paisane are waiting for ca vuie accuminciate, and si site comm’a chille ca so’ come ‘a semmana past ….
In short, operations such as the one theorized by Dragone and, now, by De Luca and Cappuccio require a very long preparatory work on the territory, substantial economic investments and numerous and gifted employees. Otherwise there is the risk of generating a real phenomenon of rejection: the same that is run by deporting school groups to the theater who do not even know what they are going to see and, having seen things they did not understand because they were not prepared to see them , first they get bored, then they get disgusted and finally they decide that they won’t go to the theater anymore.
This is with regard to the specificity of Naples. And as regards the national dimension, it is necessary to take into consideration two statements made during the press conference for the presentation of the Campania Theater Festival, those of Cappuccio himself and Rosanna Romano, director general for cultural policies of the Campania Region. The first defined the Festival he directed as an event that is now the only theatrical reference in Italy and the second declared that the Festival has become a true cultural and creative laboratory.
A single objection applies to both Cappuccio and Romano. They have forgotten the International Theater Festival promoted and organized by the Venice Biennale: a Festival which, that is, has an identity, and is proposed, in this case, just like a creative laboratory. To begin with, it has always focused its attention on research theater, which, moreover, is testified by the directors who have gradually been its directors, from Romeo Castellucci to lex Rigola and, in the last four years, to our Antonio Latella. While, for the next four years, the rudder will pass into the hands of the couple formed by Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte, that is to say the most extreme expression of the theater founded on the irrefutable truth of the body against any lenocination of the word.
I remember, in particular, that the International Theater Festival directed by Latella dedicates an entire edition, under the motto Ladies first!, To female directors. Just to come to the ever-heated debate on the rights of women denied or trampled on. And the Biennale College, as part of the call reserved for directors under 30, in 2017 (just one example) gave 110 thousand euros to the twenty-nine-year-old Leonardo Lidi, leaving him free to use them for his installation, in full autonomy, of Ibsen’s Ghosts, one of the most acute and innovative shows seen in recent years. Just to come to the creative workshop that Romano talks about.
The reality that the relationship with the actors of the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia and, now, of the Campania Teatro Festival was reduced and is reduced to the distribution of loaves and fish to everyone, absolutely everyone: starting with those who, not too long ago, they were there to announce the revolution one day or the other. This, in my country, is called welfarism, and even outside my country, welfarism is exactly the opposite of creativity.
Finally, it is quite easy to see that the frenzy of decentralization also affects the city. The headquarters of the Festival moves from the Royal Palace in Piazza Plebiscito to the Real Bosco di Capodimonte. And we hope that in June – when, in the intentions of the organizers, the Festival should start – the pandemic will have been defeated. Otherwise, under the old trees of Capodimonte, the ghosts of e cape femmene recalled by the good Don Salvatore Di Giacomo will not dance, but only Covid and its variants. Who do not use ivory fans, / powder and face powder and falbal.
March 18, 2021 | 10:32
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