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Giorgio Barberio Corsetti

prospettiva150 — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:53:16 +0000

At the airport I’m waiting for a plane to Paris where I will begin rehearsing Barker’s Gertrude at the Odeon.
I’m sitting on the usual uncomfortable chair of iron and I’m remarking on the telephone the latest sad national news with a friend.
An old grim, well-dressed cries out next to me: «If you do not like how things are going, go away!, we do not need you here in Italy, go away!»
I am surprised, so I object calmly that I was doing a private talk and what I was saying did not concern him. He shouts to be as member of Italian Parliament and that if I had not planted he would call the police …
He’s a fake?
He’s a exaggerating?
He’s an old fool?
Did I imagine it?
Is it a nightmare?
I do not know …
Sure is that never as before the arrival in Paris that time had the flavor of an exile.

Giorgio Barberio Corsetti

Simon Will – Gob Squad

prospettiva150 — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:46:33 +0000

I’m stranger in my own country. When I first read the sentence, I of course misread it…
I read: “I’m a stranger in my own country”, and in misreading it my hair stood on end. The last time I heard this comment was from a rather unpleasant taxi driver in Brisbane as he was driving us to the airport. He had detected my British accent and asked me where I came from. Often being the “stranger” with a foreign accent you get asked this question a lot, and on many occasions I enjoy to give confusing answers, which will confound the person asking the question…Sometimes I say I am from Brazil, which i clearly am not (although i possibly could be), sometimes I say I am from Wales, or Luxembourg, places so fantastically small that people don’t have anything cliché to say about them so then you can just get on with talking about something else…. You see, I really am a strange stranger.
I turned the question around on the taxi driver and asked him where he was from. He said he was from Sydney but then eagerly added that he had to move away because there was too many foreigners, and then said: “I’m a stranger in my own (bloody) country”. I swallowed hard….this coming from an Australian! and not even half of the one hour taxi ride complete! The journey continued with all the trimmings of racial slander. I tried to side track the conversation by telling him that i had lived outside of the UK (“my own country”) for many years and there were many benefits to being a stranger and strangeness in general…but it did not stop his banal hatred. At the end of the journey (once we had paid) I told him that I hoped he could learn to like himself, which did cause a moment of confusion in his eyes. But I had misread the sentence. Proving that you often see and hear what you WANT to hear rather than what is really there, which also somehow fits with the story and the statement and is probably a good place to end.

Simon Will (for Gob Squad)

Andrew Quick

prospettiva150 — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:26:48 +0000

I’m a Stranger in My Own Country
Hotel Methuselah is a story about a crisis of belonging. It is performance that centres on a man who has lost his memory – he literally does not belong anymore. The action also takes place in an unnamed country in Europe that is in the throes of civil war – in a country that no longer knows itself, which is why it is divided. These two themes have shaped how we made this show – what has created this sense of the loss of belonging and how the problem of responsibility becomes acute when the loss of belonging is felt both collectively and individually.
Haunting the performance are the various conflicts that have recently torn Europe apart and there are personal stories that inform the narratives that we tell in this piece. In my family my grandfather volunteered to fight in World War 2 when my grandmother was pregnant with my father. He did not have to fight. He was well above the age of conscription. But he left my grandmother and was caught at Dunkirk having been in the army for a few weeks. My father did not see his father for nearly seven years. What is more, when he returned home my grandfather said to my dad that he was a stranger in his own country – a sensation that those who return from conflict often experience. I have always wanted to know what moved my grandfather to abandon my grandmother. Was it in the spirit of adventure, the fleeing of responsibility or for the political good of an endangered Europe? This show is, in a small way, an exploration of these questions told through the structure of a different but parallel story – one that I hope touches the concerns of those that watch it.
Of course, being estranged is one of existential conditions of being human. If this is the negative then there is a positive side to this condition that we might consider – how we often make the stranger welcome. Perhaps, in the light of nationalism and the ever present force of patriotism that we should always be wary and highly watchful of, the stranger reminds us of what it is to be human – to be open and welcoming to those we don’t know, to the experience of the new and challenging. And this, I think is one of the purposes of theatre itself: to make strange and make anew.

a response from Andrew Quick (Imitating The Dog, UK)

Guy Cassiers

prospettiva150 — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:17:56 +0000

I came to theatre as an outsider. I studied graphic arts. I never had a proper theatre or drama education. When I and other friends started to make performances in the beginning of the eighties, we did it with our own money and without any links to the existing theatre field. We just did what we wanted to do without any reference to other theatre makers. One of my first performances was based on the play Kaspar by Peter Handke, the story of a boy forced to learn language and forced to speak. Now, thirty years later, I am the artistic director of the biggest theatre company in Flanders. I now belong to the center of the theatre field. But I continue to cultivate my view as an outsider. I keep on looking for the Kaspar in myself, for the outsider who refuses to speak the language of the others. That struggle is for me the heart of all artistic authenticity.

Guy Cassiers

Thomas Ostermeier

prospettiva150 — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:06:04 +0000

These landscape caused me a lot of abasement. I will stay so long until
this will be seen on me.

Thomas Ostermeier

Armando Punzo

prospettiva150 — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:01:51 +0000

Straniero. Come si potrebbe non essere stranieri nella patria dell’esclusione, della conservazione selvaggia? completamente svuotati da qualsivoglia domanda su altre possibili forme della propria esistenza e convivenza, la maggioranza degli italiani cerca affannosamente di accaparrarsi le ultime briciole al banchetto preparato per loro. Come tutti quelli che non riescono più a credere che si possa trasformare qualcosa dentro e fuori di sé, vivono la loro illusione fino in fondo e per questo fanno paura. L’idea di civiltà che li ha generati è sepolta e dimenticata e loro continuano a recitare meccanicamente la parte degli onnipotenti e dei vincenti. A volte dispiace un po’, ma quando pensi a chi dovresti assomigliare, cosa dovresti pensare pur di essere partecipe, cosa dovresti fare e a quali orrori collaborare, preferisci essere escluso e vivere da straniero insieme a tanti altri stranieri nel mondo e nelle idee che costruiscono sulle rovine degli altri possibilità diverse che comprendono anche loro.

Armando Punzo

Pathosformel

prospettiva150 — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:49:03 +0000

Essere stranieri in patria può significare sentirsi d’improvviso sprovvisti di una lingua data che ci accomuni alle persone di fronte a noi, essere consegnati all’incomprensione. Eppure, if poetry is what is lost in translation, esiste forse anche un tipo di poesia, che nasce proprio dallo scarto di quest’apparente incomprensione. Trovarsi di fronte a una serie di suoni a cui non abbiamo pieno accesso, e che ci rendono d’improvviso capaci – o forse ci costringono – ad inventare, più che capire, un senso ultimo contenuto nelle parole altrui questa è la condizione: essere felicemente disarmati di fronte alla lingua dell’altro, entrare d’improvviso nelle prime pieghe accessibili della sua lingua e scoprire un mondo nuovo fatto di regole proprie. E questo forse non è solo un esercizio poetico, ma la base della nostra convivenza civile.

Pathosformel

Portage

prospettiva150 — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:47:26 +0000

A few comments.
First we must destroy a myth. Being a stranger in one’s own country is a positive condition.
These are not comments on a worthy individual who, when there is no one to stop him from waiting patiently, follows migratory flows because patience is not really the most attractive virtue, nor are they a reference to Mameli or to extremism that naturally avoids the possibilities offered by nuances of grey. Perhaps for most people there is only the disturbing ideal of an inevitable defeat seen from two different viewpoints, two sides of the same coin: “take it out on the stranger / do not take it out on the stranger, because in any case it is not my country, I am not among the few.
So what is it? Human nature makes us automatically accept the condition of citizen of the world and to consider the problem as if it regarded every human being from the start of time. And now the positive aspect of being a stranger in one’s own country in the words of our beloved Derrida :”…the stranger is the one who asks the first question, or the one who is asked the first question…”. So if I am the stranger, as a human being, and I ask myself the first question, I question my own existence, and we have always maintained that a crisis (=change) is a condition of existence that may not be positive but is at least promising.
The issue of the stranger is a symbol of the question that each society asks itself “as if the stranger were the very question being questioned”.
And now that we feel reassured and hopeful in this positive condition of strangers in our own country, we would like to consider the relationships between the individual and the crowd and between the crowd and power, between the assertion of the individual who may learn from others, like the pugnacious chimp Caesar in one of the sequels to “Planet of the apes” that understands that fear of other people, of man, comes purely from recognising him as different, a stranger, an unknown part of himself, a desire for self-determination and a desire to be an individual who is recognisable in a crowd, perhaps an individual not yet well put together.
For lovers of quotations, particularly when they seem to be created on purpose, and above all to dampen this optimistic tone that imposes the certainty and positivism of being a stranger in one’s own country as a driving force, we will conclude with cries of hatred:
“…And I also felt ready to relive everything. As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the benign indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself – so like a brother, really – I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators on the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hatred.”
(L’Etranger – Albert Camus)

Portage

Antonio Latella

prospettiva150 — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:10:36 +0000

I need a room for part of the night, because i cannot find my own. (Bernard-Marie Koltès)
A stranger in one’s own country: I try to reconcile these two clearly irreconcilable concepts, but do not succeed. Combining them is a paradox, an error, another type of possibility that destroys the meaning of each word. How can one be a Stranger in one’s own Country? It is like saying that our own country is a stranger to us. It is like saying we are strangers to ourselves. It is something unspeakable, but yet it exists, it is real. I refer to Koltès’ monologue and to how many times the words stranger or foreigner are pronounced: many, too many times, like incessant rain. Yet their meaning is clear, explicit, written and spoken for what it is, in its fierce evidence.
“Stranger in one’s own Country” is an oxymoron, an expression born to justify an absence, a sense of uneasiness. It is a question that regards our identity, “that piece of plastic-coated paper called an identity card”. Our identity is built up with letters, numbers and codes that have an expiry date. Then what happens? When the clock strikes it is not only the document that expires, but us too. That piece of paper marks our end, until the next renewal it is as if we didn’t exist. This happens in our own country, but even more so if we live in a foreign country, waiting for an adoption that is always painful. Painful because we have to prove our right to exist to others, forcing ourselves to demonstrate our right to live to ourselves too. Only with that piece of paper can our existence be perfect, not mutilated. Only with that document, which expires every ten years, are we people, or rather symbols of people, with the right to grow, exist, procreate, die, and work. “They make you move on by a kick in the backside. If you want it, the work is over there, and then over there, further and further away. If you want to work, if you make work your life, the meaning of your struggle, you move. Your work is always somewhere else and you can never say: I am at home. It is not possible to create a house that is yours, to try to form a new idea, even a different one, a new approach to your work, to your existence. Each time you are forced to leave one house to go to another house, or one country for another country, so that eventually when you leave a place you always feel it is your home more than the next place you stop will be, and in the end in the next place where you stop you are more foreign, even more of a stranger than ever, even though everyone knows you because they have seen you passing through so many times.” The words of Koltès. We work, we produce, therefore we exist. But the work is somewhere else, you have to find it somewhere else. And once you have found it, it slips away, far away, always further away. Our work is always somewhere else, where we will never be able to say: I am at home. Each time we are forced to leave and to find another house, another country, so that eventually when you leave a place you always feel it is your home more than the next place will be. We are always forced to leave. When we do not agree, when we try to break the chain to find a new way, when we try to break the identity of a place to create a new one… at that moment those who wanted you until then, send you away, making you feel a Stranger in your own Country.Behind you lies the desert, in front of you more solitude. But “the solitude of the outcast, of the stranger” (as Koltès says) may also have a positive value, at least for me, perhaps because I have always tried to achieve the natural condition of “being a stranger”. It must have one. In this condition one can find a new way of living one’s everyday life, particularly when one has the courage to uproot oneself, becoming a stranger not only to others but above all to oneself. In this solitude we have to turn our backs on what we consider recognisable, or rather, on what we identify as knowable, to come to terms with a new “self”, to get to know ourselves but not to recognise ourselves, to meet ourselves and not to find ourselves. Being a Stranger in one’s own Country allows us to exploit the fact that we are not understood, particularly by ourselves, to find new languages. And with these new languages to speak to others and to ourselves as we have never done before. In fact, I think that the possibility of being a Stranger in one’s own Country may be a regenerative, liberating experience for many of us, even a necessary one, to avoid being killed before our time.

Antonio Latella

Marco Baliani

prospettiva150 — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:47:47 +0000

The characters in my plays have always been “unappeased”; all of them, from the horse trainer Michele Kohlhaas to the latest bandit Carmine Crocco, from Ibsen’s Peer Gynt to von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemil, belong to this existential category. Their detachment from society and the time in which they live their lives, derives from a special condition of being outside standards and conventions. They are anti-heroes, not destined to play a leading role in History, but in spite of this, because of their belief in principles and sentiments that cannot be written off or compromised, they actually write history.
It is clear that History has to eliminate them, they are figures destined to be defeated, and this is probably why I love them. They symbolise a conflict that can only break out with the statutes of society that surrounds them. The characters live in constant precariousness, there is no place for them, but they continue to look for a place, they want one, they aspire to human and social justice, they want to feel welcomed and understood, not banished and exiled. But this does not happen and this generates their terrible nature.
Camus’s Meursault is a perfect example of an unappeased person, his detachment is total, in his very ingenuity. When I directed him, performed him and imagined him on his last night before his execution, the stage was a raft of disconnected tablets hanging on four pulleys that lifted it off the ground; it was my cell covered with sand, in which I moved in constant precariousness, the tablet shook, the table and chair rocked, nothing, not even my body, was safe. This is the condition of someone who finds he is a stranger in his own country, he no longer has solid ground under his feet, he is always on the point of falling, of losing himself.
“A man who always tells the truth”, this is a social deviance of Camus’ character, and for this unshakeable essence he will face the guillotine, like Kohlhaas who was hanged for his unwavering faith in justice, like Carmine Crocco who is in prison because he thirsts for dignity.
They are not nice, saintly characters, they are full of life, so they are also obscure and ambiguous, at times brutal, often incapable of the necessary meditation. I wondered if my liking for these characters is also a way of identifying with their existential credo. Maybe in a way it is, maybe I love them for the theatrical force contained in their stories, for the unresolvable conflicts that they represent. For the restlessness they bring to the stage that even affects the spectators. These characters do not belong to the so-called civil theatre, they are not innocent victims whose stories generate indignation; no, their existence troubles, scares and disturbs us. This is what I ask of the theatre.

Marco Baliani