Towards a Weird Theatre/ Straight to the Point/ PIPPO DELBONO’S WONDERFUL THEATRE

(Thoughts from Behind a Tiny Red Piano)

Having been asked to review Phillip Adams’ Lamb, presented by Lux Boreal Danza Contemporánea, I feel it my duty to announce to the reader straight away that I’ve failed. I’ve failed for a number of reasons, the primary one being the fact that I accidentally ended up on stage as part of the performance, seated behind one of the five tiny red pianos. With a limited view and a somewhat distorted perception, it would be unfair to present my opinion in a full review, allow me just to say that for a production that features five random spectators playing tiny red pianos, I found it surprisingly humourless, and its abstract manner of presenting important issues of humanity (most notably, if I understood it correctly, religion and death) seemed to me somewhat ineffective. In either case, I presume it might be agreed upon that it was a piece of weird theatre.

That brings me to a subject that – seated behind my tiny red piano – I had the chance to think through for quite a while: the sheer volume of weird theatre presented at this year’s Interferences. In fact, I even came up with a possible title for my article on the festival: The Cluj Cabinet of Curiosities. I find it admirable: since last Wednesday, I’ve seen here some really strange theatre, which in itself is nothing unusual – much of it, however, was presented on the main stage of the Hungarian Theatre, for an audience of several hundred. Take, for instance, András Urbán’s Roses: a production that spends a number of minutes just with three large toy zebras being moved around to form tableaux vivants or with variously lit statues of flamingos. A production that, for much of the time, only uses a small section of the large stage, which seems wasted for tens of minutes – and suddenly, in a veritable coup de théâtre, the sides fall apart and a glorious image appears. I admire the courage of the festival programming – and I admire the audience that comes plentiful and watches patiently, a blessing for any kind of a festival. It is obvious that the Cluj audiences have been exposed to (and got used to) theatre that demands a kind of spectator’s experience, not just from the visiting productions, but also from the Hungarian Theatre’s own productions, such as Christmas at the Ivanovs or Caravaggio Terminal – the latter of which, I must admit, I found hard to grasp myself.

Even though, admittedly, not all the shows at the festival have been great (not nearly all, one might say), the stay at Interferences has been a highly inspiring one, and one that I am grateful for. Those were the thoughts that ran through my mind as I was seated behind my tiny red piano and not particularly enjoying the performance I was myself part of. In case anyone wondered, I was playing minimalist improvisations combined with free variations of a Czech folk song named Ovčáci, čtveráci (“Cunning shepherds”) and Bizet’s L’amour est un oiseau rebelle. What my colleagues were playing, I haven’t the slightest idea.

Straight to the Point


I have been thinking so far about Pippo Delbono's show, trying to find a balance between my emotions and my, let's call it, rationality. In a festival there is a sensitive ingredient, which has not to been underestimated; the artists are not just performing for an audience, but they know that in the theatre darkness many of the eyes are going to twist their feeling in digital ink. During a festival the parterre is populated mainly by critics, bloggers and guests that watch, and probably will write about each show. I believe that just for this reason, their perceptions could be corrupted, even before taking their sit in the theatre. On the other side the artist performance is probably affected by this awareness. True or false that it could be, we should distinguish theory from substance. Yesterday on the stage I did not see anything that I could have called art, or a good work, when an artist has thick and great skills cannot expect that the audience will take mediocrity from him, he has a commitment to continue, like a priest with his folk, like a lighthouse guides its sons. Yesterday evening, in the dark of the parterre I watched Delbono's show not like someone that was suppose to write an article, but like someone that consider this artist a milestone, an artist who makes a real opposition to OUR decadent, trivial, empty Italian Theatre. Unfortunately, last night Delbono has betray my expectations. I could now make a long list of all the things that have brought me to make this consideration, but this is not my intent, today I am writing as a spectator and not as a blogger. Today I feel more empty than yesterday, today I will probably upset many people, but if is true that Art is free it is as well true that sensation and thought should not be censored. I spoke with many people, as I usual do, after the show, with some we had the same feeling on the show, some other instead liked it, luckily this shows the difference between individuals.
But still I have to say that the monster that I see in the horizon is the risk for many people to switch off objectiveness and switch on a depersonalized thought. It is hard for anyone to be impartial and not influenced by our experience, or by the celebrity an artist could have reached. Sorry to write this banality, but celebrity it is not always the equivalent of quality. At the same time I still believe that we are, as an audience, still able to recognize things for what they are. I left the Hungarian Theatre, quite disappointed, I like Delbono's shows, but not this one. I went to Tiff House, but the concert was delayed, and just when I decided to go home, the Egy Kiss Erzsi Zene started playing. The powerful singer and musicians healed my wounds, a great energy was flooding out of the stage contaminating all the people, I took another beer and I cheered to Delbono, because whatever negative or positive, he caught my feelings, even if disappointed, in a way or in another and I am still thinking about it...so yeah somehow he went straight to the point....
 

 

PIPPO DELBONO’S WONDERFUL THEATRE

When I saw Pippo Delbono’s works – the films “Amore Carne” and “Sangue”, as well as the theatre piece “Amore e Carne” - I unexpectedly found myself crying.

Delicately and intensely he embraced my soul with love and strength, slowly guiding it through a far, foggy, but known path which I progressively recognized as the path of my own memories and hopes, of the dreams and strong perceptions I had when, as an adolescent, I lived of pure emotions, and I had just started searching the real sense of our existence. Through the sincere nudity of his words, Pippo Delbono reached my naked soul and embraced it, in an uncontainable crescendo of intensity.

I could experience a total identification with his poetic world and concept, his emotions were my emotions, his pain was my pain, and his joy was my joy. A real catharsis, like in the ancient Greek tragedies.

In “Amore Carne”, Pippo Delbono uses absolutely delightful and synesthetic words, written by him and by other poets, such as A. Rimbaud, T. Eliot, W. Whitman and P. P. Pasolini. Through these breath-taking poems, accompanied by Alexander Balanescu’s sublime violin, Pippo Delbono expresses a poetic world and types of feelings that I viscerally share. Watching his films has been like looking at me in the mirror.

The stupendous “Ballata delle Madri” (Ballad of the Mothers) by Pier Paolo Pasolini, recited by Pippo Delbono both in “Amore Carne” and in “Amore e Carne”, is a powerful and lucid poem against the conformism, moral mediocrity and servility that Pasolini mercilessly criticised in his writings, movies and theatre pieces.

The final part of “Amore Carne” is a hymn to Love, a scream of this infinite feeling which pervades everything, a scream where Pippo Delbono’s voice becomes the sound of the seagulls which fly over the sea, as he beautifully films them in one of the last scenes of the movie. In the performance “Amore e Carne” this explosion of universal Love is followed, instead, by a dance where the actor looks like a shaman, a blissful, smiling creature between earth and sky.

Through one of its characters, the film “Sangue” tackles a very controversial period of the Italian recent history, the so called “Anni di Piombo ” (Years of lead), from the 1970s to early 1980s. This was an era of political turmoil during which groups both of extreme right and left political orientation committed a series of terrorist attacks.

Nevertheless, this is not the main theme of the movie, at all.

In fact, “Sangue” is about Death and dramatically explores the way a human being dies, and also the way a man kills another man. Furthermore, it represents how death is lived by the ones who remain and watch the end of life happening before their eyes.

The plot develops through two parallel stories of faith and death, where the protagonists are Pippo Delbono’s mother, Margherita, and Prospero Gallinari, a leader of the leftist terrorist group “Red Brigades”. Two completely different people and kinds of death, Margherita’s natural one, after a long and intense life, and a political execution, that is, the death given by Prospero, together with his companions, to one of their prisoners. 

Prospero and Margherita could not be more opposite in their ideals; Prospero is atheist and communist, Margherita is an ardent catholic. However, they both are fervent believers. Margherita and Prospero’s lives are surprisingly linked by this and also by the unexpected encounter and friendship between Prospero and Pippo Delbono, Margherita’s son.

The sequence of essential scenes, where Delbono describes his mother’s disease and death, was for me the most touching part of the movie. With great respect and dignity, he shows disease and death as they are.

When filming her stay in hospital, he shoots for a long time his hand hanging and grasping hers, almost as if trying to convey life to his mother. In this scene, Delbono manages to express a strong love and warmth, the cold and gelid atmosphere which surrounds them is made warmer by his continuous caresses to her dying body.

The camera follows his mother’s last instants, as well as the painful ritual of death, until the heart-breaking moment nobody would like to think about, when the coffin is sealed off.

The Death fills the suffocating space of the hospital mortuary. The pain felt by the actor shouts, without sounds or words, in the grey, yellow silence of the room, filling the spectator’s heart with the same atrocious feelings. I really felt like it was happening to me. That was my loss, and my irreparable tragedy, as well.

Francesca Moschitta