FRI 13   at 22.15
EX CHIESA SAN MICHELE

CAROLINE BAGLIONI / MICHELANGELO BELLANI Perugia

GIANNI ispirato alla voce di Gianni Pampanini

by and with Caroline Baglioni
lights Gianni Straropoli
director Michelangelo Bellani
supervisor  c.J. Grugher
Prizes: Scenario per Ustica 2015, Premio In-Box 2016, Premio Museo Cervi - Teatro per la Memoria 2017

I was around 13. My father came home and said it was time to take care of Gianni. He was a giant, Gianni. Almost 2 meters long, but they could very well be three, for me. In my mind there's a white and black movie. Gianni is a far memory, now, but even back then, when he was there, he was far away. He was the uncle who scared me, the one with manic depression. He had that gaze, like he knew things, but he kept them for himself, he didn't told us. He smoked and he kept them to himself. Gianni was never fine. If he was at my house, he wanted to go back to his. If we were by his house, he wanted to go out. If he was outside, he wanted to go back in. Inside and outside was all his life. Inside his home. Inside the mental health facility. Inside his disease. Inside his pain. Inside his thoughts. Inside his smoke. Inside his car. And outside. Outside of everything he wanted. He was never at peace, Gianni. Every inch of his skin was covered in hope, hope of being okay. Being okay was his biggest search. Who doesn't want to be okay? In 2001, Gianni killed himself, right at the top of the Subasio Mount, in Umbria.

Four years later, in a box with old CDs, I've found three tapes. Three tapes with Gianni's voice: he screamed his wishes, sang his joy, showed his sadness, left his legacy. In 1984, one year before I was born, Gianni recorded words that I, and I alone, would have listened to after twenty years. I listened again and again, for years, thinking about the strange fate who had linked us together. (Caroline Baglioni)

When Caroline made me listen to Gianni's tapes for the first time, I immediately thought about a theater poject that could tell this story. The story of a man and the story of a time period. The story of a bond. The time period: the magnificent '80s. (The three tapes were recorded between 1984 and 1986). We asked ourselves why woudl he record those tapes. Did he want to leave a sign of his life? Did he want to listen back to himself, to discover what was there, in the void inside of him? Was it just a way to dispel his fear of living? It's a stream of consciousness, ironic, witty, sad, tragic, moving - a stream that moves between longing for life and death with the same strenght and the same passion. The true evocative strenght of his language, though, is its ability to bring us deep inside our own existance and make us understand that all of us, at least once in our life, have felt just like Gianni has. (Michelangelo Bellani)

Caroline Baglioni and Michelangelo Bellani meet inside the contemporary theater group "La società dello spettacolo", of which Bellani has been founder and artistic co-director. After the monologue "Gianni" (Winner of Premio Scenario per Ustica 2015, winner of In-Box 2016, Premio Museo Cervi - Teatro per la Memoria 2017), they started a new artistic project with the collaboration of the light artist Gianni Staropoli. "My father hasn't been born yet", the second parto of a trilogy set around blood ties, was performed at the Festival dei 2 mondi di Spoleto 2018, and won the Visionari al Kilowatt Festival 2019. The third part "Sempre Verde" made its debut this June at the Asti Teatro Festival.

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