«Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this particular consideration; never overstep the modesty of nature. For excess is the opposite of the purpose of acting, whose end, both originally and now, is to hold, as it were, a mirror up to nature; to show virtue in its own image, folly in its own image, and the very age and body of time in its form and pressure».
More than four centuries ago, in a time suspended between two worlds – a Medieval that was drawing to an end, and the approaching modern age – the young prince Hamlet. discussing with the company of actors who had just arrived in Elsinore, expressed the essence of the theatre in its mirroring of nature and the present. To “see more clearly”, to visualise, in the play of reflections, the most profound meaning of things.
His was a timeless truth, one that remains vivid and topical, even more so in our present, in an era that is, once again, characterised by profound transformations and pulled by opposing forces. Now, as was the case then, the theatre remains a place of discovery, of meeting and rediscovery, of understanding – entertaining and moving – , a place that allows us to travel and explore from the comfort of our seat. A place in which to encounter ourselves and others.
It is on the basis of this original purpose of theatre that with every season, the Piccolo returns to the very pillars of its existence (now, as it was seventy-five years ago, when it was founded); to offer audiences cues for reflection and awareness, for fun and enjoyment; to create maps and atlases that allow them to follow unexplored paths and lose themselves in the openness of “levity”. In other words, to recompose the mirror that reflects our changing world.
In September, we will finally, once again, be presenting a full season that will take place from October 2022 to June 2023. For the first time after two years of pandemic and fragmented programming, the season has come together again with a rich catalogue of shows that combines classics with contemporary works; in which the voices of the Masters harmonise with those of emerging artists; in which the excellences of Italian theatre encounter and reflect with some of the most interesting figures on the international scene.
In the run-up to the publication of the Piccolo’s full programme, we are now presenting the four shows that will inaugurate the new season; three national productions that will literally reopen the auditoriums of the Teatro Grassi, the Strehler and the Studio Melato, and the fourth, which marks our renewed dialogue with Europe, and the return of foreign guest productions.
The Strehler will be animated by M Il figlio del secolo, a funambulatory story of Mussolini’s possibly unstoppable rise to power, a dizzying adaptation of the monumental novel of the same name by Antonio Scurati directed by Massimo Popolizio, who is joined on stage by Tommaso Ragno and an extraordinary and close-knit cast of sixteen actors; the Studio Melato will instead see the return to the stage of Hamlet, a highly original re-reading of the colossal Shakespearean work and world, true to every original word while at the same time illuminatingly visionary, directed by Antonio Latella and entrusted to an excellent and close-knit cast that will seek to lay bare the secret heart of theatre; the Grassi will see the debut of Le memorie di Ivan Karamazov, a fascinating and sinister examination of Dostoevsky’s hallucinations presented by the unrivalled Umberto Orsini, part prodigious literary creation and part autobiography (we recall I fratelli Karamazov by Sandro Bolchi, with Orsini in the role of Ivan); and again at the Teatro Grassi, the return of the international season, with Reporters de guerre by the French-Belgian Sébastien Foucault, who trained alongside Milo Rau; a lucid and courageous reflection on the mechanisms of documentary theatre and its responsibilities, and the limits of narration (journalistic and non), formed and created approximately thirty years on from the outbreak of the bloody conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, as a new war rages on the eastern borders of Europe.
These are four opening productions in which recent successes are alternated with new proposals, lending space to brand-new works while offering everyone an opportunity to recover what they had missed or to once again enjoy what they had seen and loved. Four productions that form the “raw materials” for the future season, a landscape characterised by great actors and young talents, of both established and new names, of that which is ours and that which is “of others”, refreshing an idea of theatre as a “vital expression of community” that we will obsessively nurture with each new season. It is a promise that the Piccolo intends to keep, with all the strength of its history, with its stubborn grasp on the present and its sights set firmly on the future.
Claudio Longhi