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Camilla Rigatti
Enthusiastic young people. Director Firenza Guidi: ‘History becomes a personal memory’
Thanks to the resources and spaces made available by the Municipality of Cerreto Guidi and the great determination of Firenza Guidi and the team of the Elan Frantoio cultural association in Fucecchio to brave the bad weather, DIARI went ahead despite the snow until the scheduled end, suffering only a brief interruption caused by the closure of schools.
The staging of the performance AUSCHWITZ in the morning at the headquarters of the Misericordia di Cerreto Guidi in Piazza Dante Desideri saw the pupils of the first year of the “Leonardo da Vinci” secondary school in Cerreto Guidi, Vinci and Sovigliana take turns as spectators.
However, the role of the young students involved was not limited to simply watching a show. The work of the actors of the Frantoio’s Permanent Company served as a real space-time gateway that introduced the children to the reality of the Auschwitz extermination camp. Passing through it, they themselves became the deportees, watching, listening, experiencing, sometimes crying, but above all writing down the strong emotions provoked by the performance.
DIARI marked the beginning of an educational and artistic journey that will accompany the students from the first to the third year, when they will leave for Amsterdam to visit Anne Frank’s house.
‘The project is part of an educational programme that sees the municipal administration and educational institutions working together,’ said Carlo Tempesti, mayor of Cerreto Guidi. ‘In particular, DIARI aims to raise awareness among young people about peace between peoples and issues concerning memory. I had the opportunity to talk to the teachers of the classes involved in the initiative, and they all agreed that it was one of the most beautiful projects firenza guidi has ever created for schoolchildren. What these children have written is extraordinary.’
The “Diary” in which the first-year pupils transcribed everything they saw, heard and felt was made by hand. Firenza guidi personally met with all the classes involved and explained, through a small workshop, how to make it with straw-yellow paper, complete with a cover, title page and dedication. The diary that each child carried with them during the performances in Cerreto thus represented the most personal and intimate of tools, in which to record the feelings induced by a historical interlude that also became personal and intimate, internalised through a channel that passes through the unique and unrepeatable experiences of each individual. A different story – more than history, stories, that fabric of memories that are absolutely personal and different from those of anyone else, commonly referred to as “memory”.
And it is precisely on the poignant effectiveness of memory that director firenza guidi has been betting for years: “The history lesson does not come as a notion, a dry and distant fact that must be noted and remembered for the history test or assignment. The memory touches the skin and, becoming the protagonist, is embodied,” she says. ‘The memory and the notion of history are embodied. I become history. Not only can I do this, but I am encouraged to give my all to the act of remembering. And first-person memory is an emotional fabric within which I, a very young citizen, weave my web of connections between my small world and the vast and impenetrable world of history. When I experienced and saw that someone like me could be the person I remember, with my own desires and fears, then I think that History, with a capital H, is not so distant and not so boring: because, in reality, I am history.”
From this perspective, DIARI has an unprecedented educational format. The aim is to create a theatre that is art, creative writing, construction, development of independent thinking, emotion. The young people participated with unexpected enthusiasm, baring their souls and truly expressing themselves to the fullest, writing in the diaries they created together with the director.
The classes that missed out on the project activities in Cerreto Guidi due to snow will catch up on DIARI in March, when AUSCHWITZ will be staged at the Frantoio di Fucecchio.
Director, author and director of Elan Frantoio, firenza guidi has been producing theatre shows and films inspired by events, memories and phenomena related to the local and universal sphere for fifteen years. Elan Frantoio’s activities are based on the philosophy of staging new dramas: new because they are unpublished in terms of texts and scenography, or new because they belong to contemporary authors who have never been represented in our country.