int’o rione
NoonJuly 15, 2022 – 09:39
from Fortunato Cerlino
When I met M. for the first time, I immediately understood that I was faced with an extraordinary talent. From the moment she set foot on the stage I could no longer take my eyes off that young actress, certainly immature, lacking in technique, yet so bright. Her every movement was harmony, her every word music. She is dry, essential, devoid of emphasis. Even her naïve smudges, her strong southern accent for example, took a back seat to the ease with which she recited Ophelia. She was Ofelia, through and through. Sometimes it happens, in the theater, that although the spectator is aware of being in front of a fiction, an actor manages to be so authentic as to drag him without any possibility of defense into an experience that is truer than truth. The context in which I met M. was that of the workshops organized by the chair of Professor Vianello del Dams of the University of Calabria.
I taught the students of those courses methodologies and techniques of acting and stage writing. In those years I had the opportunity to meet and train dozens of students, some of whom, fortunately, then found their place in the world of entertainment. The case of M. however, will remain forever etched in my soul. I was so impressed that in the following days I invited some professional colleagues whose opinion I trusted to attend the course. I said nothing to them so as not to condition their judgment. When M. entered the scene again they too were literally overwhelmed by the genius of that young actress. They even asked me if, as a joke, I hadn’t put a professional actress in that group of students. I wasn’t wrong. M. was born for art. Overcoming the precautions that my role as a pedagogue imposed on me, without however exerting any pressure or creating false hopes, I told M. what I thought.
“This is a complicated job. Unfortunately, talent is not enough to guarantee an actor to survive with his work. But I can’t help but tell you that if anyone has to try, it’s you. “
M. looked at me with a melancholy that pierced me. Her eyes filled with tears.
“I know I know…”. She just answered me.
Over the next few days we both pretended we never had that conversation. We continued to work. M. seemed to fly on the boards of the stage. On the last day of the lab she greeted me with a bitter smile, then she ran away. The following year I returned to that university to hold a new laboratory. I found with pleasure many of the students of the previous year, but no trace of M. I asked about her, you get no answers. The next day, a colleague and friend of hers sent me a letter from her. I tore it into a thousand pieces immediately after reading it. I couldn’t bear what was written. Today, reading the news relating to the Invalsi data of the La Sapienza University of Rome which photograph, among other things, a truly dramatic figure of early school leaving in the south, I came to mind some of the things that M. had written to me.
«Dear professor, last year your words of appreciation about my work filled me with happiness and terror at the same time. If on the one hand they have been the confirmation of what my heart has always known, on the other hand they have given me the certainty that I will never be as happy as I could be. I come from a small village in the Calabrian hinterland. Mine is an old-fashioned family, like there are so many in our area. Enrolling in college was the greatest achievement of my life for me. The pact, however, was that, after completing the cycle of studies, I would go back to being a normal daughter. My marriage had long been established. A nice local boy I grew up with. After the wedding, our families had already arranged for us to open a grocery store and spend the rest of our days here. I am writing to you while I am in the seventh month of pregnancy. We will have a baby girl, she will be called Ofelia, this I managed to get. She was right, talent is not enough to be a great artist. It also takes courage, and I didn’t have it. I didn’t feel like fighting my family, my world, leaving everything and everyone behind, enduring the accusations, abandonments and material difficulties to which the choice to follow my talent would have exposed me. It’s only my fault. I tried the taste of freedom but I decided to give it up. I’m going to teach my daughter Shakespeare verses. Who knows that she, unlike me, will not find the strength to win the battle to which every hero is called, to be a scandal and a gift to her land. Forget me, as I will try to do with you. M. “.
July 15, 2022 | 09:39
© Time.News