Just three days ago a mutual friend, the actor and director Saverio La Ruina, who had gone to visit him in Sibari, where he lived after his return from Calabria, told me: «I found him calm, he knows that he has little left but he is living these last days with the serene awareness of having had a full existence». And, I add, probably with the equally full awareness of having been a great figure of Italian research theatre, of the so-called second avant-garde, highly acclaimed abroad too, a Master who left examples and teachings of an exemplary way of experiencing the stage and everything connected to it. So yesterday, in the Hospice of Cassano Ionio, Giancarlo Cauteruccio passed away (he would have turned 70 in July and was born in Marano Marchesato, in the province of Cosenza), who first became great in Florence (where he had studied Architecture), with the Krypton group above all, and then in Scandicci with the Teatro Studio: he was the artist par excellence of multimedia research, at the same time extraordinarily modern and technological, but also – when necessary – faithful to word.
Between Calabrian roots and international avant-garde
Also known abroad for his poetics based on the relationship between art and ultra-modern technique, Cauteruccio has always remained tied to his Calabria, despite creating shows that speak to the whole world. «Bringing Calabrian to the theater and making it an artistic language, like other regional languages» was a central project in his very intense activity. Titles like «Picchì mi look si tu si masculu» and «Panza, crianza e memorianza» speak volumes, as do an «Endgame» by Beckett in Calabrian or the “dialect” insertions in «Krapp’s Last Tape» and in other famous texts. But it is above all the relationship between space, light, word and sound in three-dimensional visual dimensions, from “visions” precisely, that has brought Cauteruccio’s shows all over the world, from New York to Moscow, Berlin, Oslo etc.
The theater as an architecture of light and sound
For him the theater was «a space that must be structured with light and sound». Over time he added that of actor to his work as a director and set designer: «It happened to me out of necessity – he said –, out of a sort of bulimic desire to take possession of the text at all levels». And you can’t help but think of his powerful build. He wanted to produce not so much contaminations, but instead real metamorphoses as, for example, in what became a cult show: «Aeneid» which, in 1983, transformed Virgil’s epic into a rock opera with the music of Litfiba, acclaimed even at La Mama in New York, the world summit of research theatre. And “Intervallo” has remained historic, a show from 1984, which transformed Florence, between Ponte Vecchio and Ponte delle Grazie, into an imaginative vision with the use of laser rays, which was a precursor of a way of transforming reality, later used above all by cinema.
Scandicci capital of experimentation
With him Scandicci became a true capital of experimentation, hosting great artists, from Bob Wilson to Luca Ronconi, while Cauteruccio strung together important collaborations, from Irene Papas to Franco Battiato and Ornella Vanoni (directed in Calabria in 2007 in the show «Femmina e calcio»). And, if this was the case, he gave precedence to his ideas and not to the expectations of the spectators, as happened in «Canti orfici/Visioni» (seen at the Vittorio Emanuele in Messina in 2016), inspired by the text by Dino Campana, where his technological experiments entered the poet’s thoughts and became dreamlike visions, of realities crumbled into imaginations and premonitions.
The love for Beckett and the centrality of the body
But her true great love was probably Samuel Beckett. It is no coincidence that his “Krapp” remained indelible in my memory, seen in Milan in 2005, when the public entering the theater found Cauteruccio busy cooking a fragrant dish of spaghetti with sauce (which he then shared with a spectator). The extraordinary insight in that show was to use his body to “explain” Krapp. The protagonist’s bulimia, which the Irish writer had highlighted in an initial scene in which he eats many bananas, was placed in the foreground by the Calabrian artist to contrast the anorexia of the affections.
Civil commitment and the ultimate dream for his land
Mind and body, therefore, from Beckett to Cauteruccio, were one and the same. Having ended his experience in Tuscany amidst a thousand controversies (and yet he returned to Scandicci just a year ago to direct “The Return of the Soldier” for the centenary of Saverio Strati, another great Calabrian who emigrated there), celebrated yesterday by the president of the Tuscany Region, Giani, Cauteruccio returned to Calabria, becoming a point of reference for his fellow countrymen and where, in March two years ago, he invented an extraordinary theatrical action, entitled “Arithmos KR46M, KR14F9», to celebrate the first anniversary of the migrant shipwreck in Cutro, which caused 94 victims. Musicians and actors, together with him, stood on the beach looking towards the remains of the boats floating in the sea, symbols and reality at the same time.
And he worked for Calabria until a few days ago, designing a House of Music for the Municipality of Rende, destined to become an international opera center. As if to say, in his own way, “panza, crianza and remembrance” to the end. The funeral will be tomorrow at 10.30 in the church of Gesù Buon Pastore in Sibari.