When
Friday, 27 April 2012, 9:15 p.m.
Where
Auditorium ‘La Tinaia’, Parco Corsini, Fucecchio (FI)
Press office
Camilla Rigatti
Presentation of the performer training workshop conceived and conducted by Firenza Guidi
What must performers find within themselves and what outside themselves? What does it mean to be outside oneself? Madness, anger, a sense of loss? Beauty? What is beauty in performance? What is beauty without frills? Where does beauty reside when performers (e.g., circus performers) must undergo monolithic physical training that could obscure it? Does beauty move and change people? Can beauty exist without depth? Does beauty have to do with an inner and outer light? Like a kind of aura that makes them more beautiful?
These are the questions that guided Firenza Guidi in conducting the HORS DE MOI/FUORI DI ME workshop, the second workshop of the 2011-2012 season dedicated to the all-round training of performers. During HORS DE MOI/FUORI DI ME, the common thread was the expression of beauty from a performative point of view and the exploration of the countless human consequences it entails: first and foremost, charm and desire.
When performers are able to maintain their status as unique and unrepeatable individuals, with their own inner lives and thoughts that the audience does not know, they offer themselves to the public in such a way as to become, metaphorically, objects of the spectator’s desire. It is precisely by arousing the imagination of those attending the performance, appealing to their imagination and their desire to know the character and the story behind them, seducing the spectator (according to the Latin etymology of the term, i.e. drawing them to oneself) that, according to firenza guidi, beauty enters the scene, establishing a relationship between the audience and the performer.
The author chosen by the director to bring out these reciprocal audience-performer impulses is Tennessee Williams. Williams is a master of denied desire. Never openly homosexual, his plays shocked 1950s America by bringing to the fore the ambiguity and vulnerability of human beings. His texts are visceral and dangerously touch on taboo themes and topics. And in his dramaturgy we find some of the most beautiful monologues written for female characters, performed at the time of the Actor’s Studio by Liz Taylor, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Richard Burton and even our own Anna Magnani in “The Rose Tattoo”.
“The search for beauty, in my work as a trainer and director, delves into the murky depths, gets its hands dirty, gets entangled with the ups and downs of humanity in terms of gaze, breath and body. The desire,” says guidi, ‘is to create authentic and seductive theatre. The performer does not act but lives, exists, relates to a space or a situation, just as in life. The performer’s training is to discover and consolidate individuality and creative authenticity.”