(ANSA) - ROME, NOVEMBER 23 - They left the detention center on the island of Gorgona and abandoned the clothes of prisoners and dressed those of theatrical actors.
Five inmates undertook the journey that brought them from the island of the Tuscan archipelago to Rome, to the Palladium theater, where they were staged with an adaptation of Homer's Ulysses within "Crossed Destinies", eighth edition of the National Theater in Prison Review which ended last week.
"Ulysses or the colors of the soul", this is the title of the show, is the result of a project born two years ago in the Gorgona prison thanks also to the availability of the director Carlo Mazzerbo, says director Gianfranco Pedullà. There are about thirty inmates involved even if only five of them have obtained permission to reach the capital.
Along with them, on stage, also professional actors. Illavoro was awarded the ANCT Award 2020, Catarsi Teatridella Diversity as the best social theater show in Italy in 2020 and is the first episode of the trilogy "Il teatrodel mare", the second will address Ovid's Metamorphoses, the director anticipates, the third is still to decide. La Tapparomana is not the first public release, in September it was first on the island, then in October it went on stage at the Teatro delle Arti in Lastra a Signa (FI), where Pedullà directs the permanent company of the Popular Art Theater .
"Gorgona is a special place - he says - the first time I went I was impressed by the naturalistic context, by the sea and I immediately thought of Ulysses. Then the laboratory with the prisoners was born, we prepared the text and together with the musician Francesco Giorgi and Chiara Migliorini , theater trainer and actress, we made a synthesis, but the content is dedicated to them, to the inmates, they are their biographies.
The first time we staged it we did it outdoors in front of the sea, with a boat moving on the 'water". Then the show was also adapted for an indoor theater with the imaginative and essential scenography by Claudio Pini.
"'Ulysses or the colors of the soul' is a working in progress - warns the director who has been working with teatro nellecarceri for 25 years - we have already made ten performances and I have not had the same actors, in normal theater it would be a tragedy, so it becomes a wealth. It's a bit like the commedia dell'arte and I like it very much ". The theatrical pieces, adds Pedullà, "speaks of the relationship between animals and men, between instinct and reason, between freedom and slavery, between life, its beauty and its monstrosities". While the theme of the sea recurs incessantly, as a color, as a place to cross, as an element that separates, as an entity to be dominated, as a sound. On stage Lamessa plays with ease between the commedia dell'arte and classical theater. Mix the original text, the new one,popular music, unbridled dances and revives the figure of Ulysses, always a sailor on his way home, but also a modern-day man. The protagonist reminds us that each of us is a bit shipwrecked in some storm, everyone is a stranger in some place and is often also a stranger to himself. He is a Ulysses with many souls, he is at the same time a migrant, a seaman, a soldier, a murderer, a lonely man in search of his homeland wherever he is, he is an illegal immigrant because he travels hidden from land to land, from people to people, but all the populations. , reads the text, "they are hostile to the illegal immigrants of the destiny". On stage we retrace the adventures of Polyphemus, Circe, the sirens. "They are sirens - Pedullà points out - who respect the classic system: monstrous bird women with a persuasive voice,menacing beings who eat life ". The adventures of Ulysses land in a sort of Barnum circus, confusingly with the last of the society, engaged in an excited dance, which ends in front of the sea, a landing and restarting place, while a chorus of voices with the most disparate accents provide the background sound, giving voice to many wrecked people: "We started from our destroyed cities in search of a new world. We are strangers, who have come here driven by an unthinkable destiny "and warns:" Life is a long way back ".while a chorus of voices with the most disparate accents acts as a background sound, giving voice to many unsuccessful people: "We started from our destroyed cities in search of a new world. We are strangers, arrived here driven by an unthinkable destiny" and warns: "Life is a long way back ".while a chorus of voices with the most disparate accents acts as a background sound, giving voice to many unsuccessful people: "We started from our destroyed cities in search of a new world. We are strangers, arrived here driven by an unthinkable destiny" and warns: "Life is a long way back ".
The curtain falls.
Lots of excited applause the other night at the Palladium Theater and while the actors smile with their heads held high, the held-actors become serious, someone lowers their head to hide the too strong emotion.
Among the five who arrive from Gorgona prison there are those who are experiencing their first exit after years of detention, those who have served their sentence and are free for a few days, those who have a short prospect of returning a free man, thanks also to the recognition of their work. carried out with the theater workshop.
(HANDLE).