On 30 and 31 August, Print Room at the Coronet presents the Italian Theatre Festival in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute in London, curated by Monica Capuani.
The two-day festival consists of four theatre works by distinguished authors, playwrights and actors. Highlights include Mistero Buffo by Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo; Novecento by renowned writer Alessandro Baricco translated by Ann Goldstein; Hanno Tutti Ragione by Academy Award winner Paolo Sorrentino featuring Iaia Forte; and the première of a work in progress But Why? Ma perché? by Gilles Aufray and Marcello Magni – featuring Complicite co-founder Marcello Magni. On 31 August, Writing for Literature and Theatre, a talk featuring Gilles Aufray, Emanuele Trevi and Ben Okri, will be presented in the theatre’s intimate bar.
All theatre performances are in Italian with English surtitles
Italian Theatre Festival is kindly sponsored by Ersel
PROGRAMME | Thursday 30 August 2018
Hanno Tutti Ragione by Paolo Sorrentino | Directed and performed by Iaia Forte
5.00pm – 6.30pm (Auditorium)
Novecento by Alessandro Baricco with Eugenio Allegri, directed by Gabriele Vacis | Produced by Teatro Stabile di Torino
8.00pm – 9.30pm (Auditorium)
PROGRAMME | Friday 31 August 2018
Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo with Matthias Martelli, directed by Eugenio Allegri | Produced by Teatro Stabile di Torino
4.00pm – 5.45pm (Auditorium)
Writing for literature and theatre | A talk with Gilles Aufray, Ben Okri and Emanuele Trevi
6.15pm – 7.15pm (Bar)
But Why? Ma perché? performed by Marcello Magni
8.00pm (Auditorium)
GENERAL INFORMATION
Tickets
Theatre £20|£15
Talk £5 | Bar event only
Students and concessions £10
Multi-buy Offer: Auditorium front | Receive a £15 discount when booking full price tickets for all theatre events (Offer only applies if all seats selected are in row A – D)
Multi-buy Offer: Auditorium back | Receive a £10 discount when booking full price tickets for all theatre events (Offer only applies if all seats selected are in row E – H only)
Hanno Tutti Ragione
Written by Paolo Sorrentino
Directed by Iaia Forte
With Iaia Forte
Production Pierfrancesco Pisani and OffRome
In collaboration with Infinitos.r.l and Nido di Ragno production and distribution
An episode of Paolo Sorrentino’s novel Hanno Tutti Ragione is adapted for the stage.
‘Larger than life’ Neapolitan singer Tony Pagoda is in his dressing room in New York, about to give the most important concert of his career, performing for Frank Sinatra at Radio City Music Hall.
Fuelled by alcohol and cocaine, Pagoda’s musical performance takes the audience on his own powerful journey through memories, glimmers of enlightenment, love and anguish, all set to a beautiful musical score.
After the extraordinary international success of The Great Beauty, award-winning Italian actress Iaia Forte works with Sorrentino once again, this time in the role of a man.
‘The idea of adapting the character of Tony for the stage was born out of love. I gave two staged readings of the novel and enjoyed embodying this character and enacting the beautiful words of the book so much that I wanted to convert it into a play. This singer, a cocaine addict, desperate and vital, is a character so beyond gender stereotypes that they can easily be performed by a woman. I like to think that Pagoda’s bragging sneer hides a feminine soul, a naivety, and a desire for a lost harmony. But then again, the theatre is a place where, luckily, we can ban naturalism and expand the boundaries of our fantasy.’
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Novecento
Written by Alessandro Baricco
Directed by Gabriele Vacis
With Eugenio Allegri
Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale
Società cooperativa Artquarium
Eugenio Allegri has been telling the story of Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon Novecento since 1994. An extremely popular and successful monologue, it has received over 500 performances in Italy and Europe, and been seen by over 200,000 people.
Best-selling author Alessandro Baricco is one of the most translated writers in the world, and his book has sold more than a million copies. It has also been adapted into a film by Giuseppe Tornatore, La leggenda del pianista sull’oceano, with Tim Roth in the leading role.
Allegri recounts how the play first came about: “In the courtyard of Vacis’ house, between the end of August and the beginning of September, while the barbecue scorches pieces of beef that are still in full possession of their mental faculties, an author and an actor have a witty exchange with a director. “So, what do you think? Is this pianist getting off the boat or not?” asks the author. The director and the actor give each other a puzzled glance as if to say: “Well, he’s the one who gets paid for writing, isn’t he?…”
The day goes by, helped by a few drinks of good wine, until towards the evening, when it’s time to say goodbye, Allegri says to Baricco: “Here, take this notebook, with annotations on a theatrical script that I never wrote and an inscription to the play Novecento e mille that I did with De Berardinis in 1986. There are some of my reflections on art and theatre. Adieu! Bon travail”.
Four months later, on January 27th, the first mind-blowing pages of Novecento, the theatre monologue, come back from Paris together with Baricco.
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Mistero Buffo
Written by Dario Fo
Directed by Eugenio Allegri
With Matthias Martelli
Production by Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale
Teatro della Caduta
In collaboration with Teatro Fonderia Leopolda and Comune di Follonica
Under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture, Heritage and Activities and Tourism
Dario Fo ‘who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the down-trodden’ reads the explanatory statement of the Nobel Prize awarded to him in 1997. Mistero Buffo is considered his masterpiece.
This unique work uses the deepest level of the popular tradition, reviving it and keeping it relevant in the present day by making references to contemporary life; the sacred enactments become opportunities to salvage the cultural heritage of the down-trodden, the lower classes, who can only respond with laughter and comedy.
Eugenio Allegri directs Matthias Martelli, a talented young actor of the Teatro della Caduta, in this popular jester play, which has been the inspiration for the story-telling theatre of the last twenty years.
‘In Mistero Buffo, the actor is alone on stage, with no deceptions, aiming to involve the audience in the theatrical action. Our work originates from a form of theatre which, through body language rendered by sound, with onomatopoeia, with sudden shifts of the rhythm, with mime and the actor’s striking gesticulations, moves from story-telling to interpretation or even just evocation of the characters, converting them, as needed, from servant to master, from destitute to wealthy, from Saint to crook, to illustrate feelings, reactions, relations of that sacred and profane performance called Commedia dell’arte’ Eugenio Allegri.
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Writing for Literature and Theatre
Writing for Literature and Theatre, held in the theatre’s intimate bar space, is a 60 minute talk featuring three distinguished writers: Ben Okri, Emanuele Trevi and Gilles Aufray.
Ben Okri is the author of the Booker Prize winning The Famished Road, and the forthcoming adaptation of Albert Camus’ The Outsider.
Italian writer and critic Emanuele Trevi has written numerous critical essays on literary figures, and won the EU Prize for Literature in 2012.
French writer Gilles Aufray lives in London and has worked with artists including Simon McBurney, Kathryn Hunter and Marcello Magni. His texts and plays have widely performed in France.
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But Why? Ma perché?
An evening with Marcello Magni
Little sketches from stories: read, told and improvised on stage…
A man – a relative of Nasrudin, the wise fool from Persia – returns home after a long trip abroad to find himself in front of a wall. He has never seen a wall so big or so long. But why has a wall been built across the desert? He can no longer reach his home!
Trying to understand the absurd predicament in which he finds himself, our man tells stories about walls: solid ones like the one he finds himself in front of, invisible walls that separate reason and madness and inescapable ones between life and death. He asks himself: “Which side of the wall am I on?”
An evening created by Marcello Magni, Gilles Aufray (writing) and Oliver Barwell-Aufray (music) presenting a work in progress for a future show…in which anything could happen!
