He continues to reap successes with his show «Smart Work», for which he wrote (with Armando Canzonieri) and direction, directing the young actor Francesco Rizzo in the contemporary tragedy of young precarious workers, exploited, exhausted, stuck in a routine and deleterious society, in which they are forced into infinite survival. He is Gianluca Vetromiloactor, director and street artist who founded in Lamezia Terme in 2018, with Armando Canzonieri and Achilles Ierathe «Mammut Teatro» company, after a long journey of training experiences with names such as Eugenio Barba, Cesar Brie, Davide Iodice.
With «Smart Work» – which was successfully staged in many centers – the company has already won the Denver Fringe award, the Cantiere Obraz award, the Teatro Sambuca di Sicilia award, the “We just have to laugh” award and the mention special Prague Fringe Off at the Milan/Catania Off Fringe. We spoke with Vetromilo, already busy with the new project «Emilia e Basta», semi-finalist in the Tuttoteatro.com Dante Cappelletti award.
How, when and from what needs was the Smart Work show born?
«From the need of the moment. We started working in the post-pandemic period, when alternative working solutions such as smart working began to spread. A reflection was immediately opened on the consequences that would derive from it. The question was: how will work colleagues now be able to talk to each other and take a lunch break together? So, while there was a lot of talk about smart working, we were thinking about the ever-increasing detachment between people, the alienation of relationships, the computer screen as a safe place. In a world that is increasingly in a hurry, we are losing the values of time and social relationships. There is a lot of talk about “intelligent work”, so we started to look into a whole series of jobs considered flexible, such as that of a rider and a call center operator, realizing that, in reality, there is very little that is flexible.”
By taking the show around Italy, what were the differences in perception among the public?
«The show is about a boy from the South who moves to Milan for university and then decides to stay. He chooses to stay in the North because he is afraid of that feeling of failure that you feel glued to you when you return to your own land. He stays because he knows that, if only there was the slightest possibility of a job opportunity in line with his path, it certainly wouldn’t be in the South. The show was at the FringeOff in Milan, where it is set, and, obviously, the reactions there were listen: it is a city with a huge community of southerners, and many have recognized themselves in this story. This thing struck us a lot. And it was certainly a different audience, perhaps more melancholic. Milan suffered the most from “Smart work”. In Florence it was even more surprising: a man of about sixty years old sent a comment on social media after the show. He apologized because he felt somehow responsible “for the rubble left to the new generations”, I quote. And the issue of work does not, unfortunately, only concern the South.”
So what is the secret to a successful theater show?
«Well, if there is one I want to know too! I think there is no secret, much less a way to build something successful, if this is linked to art, to the creative act, it starts from a need, from a perhaps irrational and personal act which sometimes, even if rarely, it has the magical revealing power of becoming the universal bearer of a message, even banal, but which unites many. When we talk about rights it is obvious that the message is stronger and often embraces more people than we expected. There are no successful shows but “heartfelt” shows. The real problem is that people don’t even go to the theater anymore. Perhaps we should start from this question.”
Mammut Teatro’s next projects?
«We still have many things to do, so we won’t stop. At this moment we are already working on a new project, still in its embryonic stage but already selected as a semi-finalist for the Dante Cappelletti award, and which attempts to deepen the relationship with psychological and physical pain.”
