In the summer of theatre festivals, for twenty-four fertile editions now, there is an event that marks, in a punctual and special way, the beginning. And this year too the Primavera dei Teatri Festival, directed by Saverio La Ruina, Dario De Luca and Settimio Pisano, souls of the Scena Verticale companyhas confirmed itself as a precious collective ritual, a central event in the South to observe the new contemporary scene between confirmations and novelties, grafts and new points of view.
The rich program proposed between the end of May and the beginning of June, with as many as 55 events between theater, dance, music, performance, residencies, workshops and exhibitions, has allowed the festival to establish itself as a “catalyst of change for the territory and the community, a bet on the transformative power of art” by weaving perspectives of dialogue to try to emerge from the shallows of a time marked by conflicts and lacerations. The Festival has welcomed national and international artists, journalists and professionals and a heterogeneous audience that has also taken advantage of Spring to discover the beauties of the Pollino territory that frames Castrovillari.
Among the new features “Prima”a section that, in the many spaces of the Festival, has welcomed some of the most interesting voices on the national and international dance scene. Space then for many voices and many debuts of shows that we will see around the festivals and on the billboards of Italian theaters. “Mare di grezzo”, written and directed by Antimo Casertano, mixes the story of a family spanning five generations and, at the same time, that of the former Ilva plant then Italsider in Bagnoli, one of the many open wounds of our country and of a community forced to choose between the right to work and health; a debut also “Tutta colpa di Ugo”, written and directed by Elvira Scorza, produced by Dracma di Polistena, an intimate and intimate family story, where a tender humor between two brothers is torn apart by a growing discomfort, which becomes dense with the arrival of a third character, Ugo, precisely. Still in the south, for the existence of deprivation and little love in a province marked by marginality told in “Affogo” by Dino Lopardo, a story of falls and possible rises fueled by the power of dreams. The songs of the great Mina and the stories of the women of the Messina prison, where the splendid experience of the Piccolo Shakespeare theater directed by Daniela Ursino flourishes, in an embroidery of narration and music, for “Vorrei una voce”, by and with Tindaro Granata, a hymn to the possibility of returning to dream through the theater that is life and sharing of stories and hopes sublimated by the art of the great Mina.
With “Spezzata. Rapsodia per intercessione del silenzio) the dramatic word interrupted and reiterated finely chiseled by Fabio Pisano, through the body and voice of Mariangela Granelli, directed by Livia Gionfrida, extracts from the silence the lacerated existence of Lisa Montgomery, a woman condemned to death for having stained herself with an atrocious crime, but even before that an abused child, deprived of her innocence and of every form of love. It was a magical and poignant encounter, made of hopes, dreams and desires “Pinocchio – what is a person?” show by Davide Iodice creator of the Scuola elementare del teatro, a happy and disruptive experience of a theater that is life in art, sharing beyond limits, fragility. Much applause for the hosts, with “I 4 desideri di Santu Martinu-Favolazzo obscene veloce a essere recitato dopo i pranzo” where the words of tradition, starting from some anonymous medieval fabliaux, with a musical and refined language, mix with contemporary sounds, for a dense, spicy and hyperbolic narration, the result of the interesting and peculiar research of Dario De Luca, author and performer together with Gianfranco De Franco, author of the music, also a story, all inscribed in a scene essential in its circularity, like the fate of the naive and voluptuous protagonists. Light and touching, ironic and dreamy, “La morte ovvero il pranzo della domenica” discusses with mastery and delicacy a theme often considered taboo and does so through the intense and measured interpretation of Serena Balivo, called to give body and voice, in the words of Mariano Dammacco to a woman no longer young, between memory and fear of the unknown. A vibrant harmony of sound, image, gesture, the performance “Con-Danse” an immersive experience resulting from the artistic encounter between the voice of Cecilia Foti, the sounds of Gianfranco De Franco and the video mapping of Mario Giordano was a hymn to beauty and life for a journey imagined as a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the death of the French artist Matisse.