On the estate where Vanya spends his placid existence, the arrival of Professor Serebrijakov, accompanied by his young wife Elena, is enough to to destroy all balance...
Second stage of the Chekhov Project, in Zio Vanja "art is relegated to a museum concept, stuff from aristocratic pamphlets, a sterile intellectualism that no longer thinks about its people, that bores passion and allows the incapable to live on theater."
Amid unhappy loves and lives never fully lived, Leonardo Lidi continues his journey to the deepest sense of theater, grasping in simplicity its narrative power. Choosing a space, choosing empathy, love and the pain involved in this option, but above all choosing actors as an art form and as a precious stone from defend in the Italian theater of our time.
directed by Leonardo Lidi
with Giordano Agrusta, Maurizio Cardillo, Ilaria Falini, Angela Malfitano, Francesca Mazza, Mario Pirrello, Tino Rossi, Massimiliano Speziani, Giuliana Vigogna
scenes and lighting Nicolas Bovey
costumes Aurora Damanti
sound Franco Visioli
assistant director Alba Porto
production Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria
in co-production with Teatro Stabile di Torino - Teatro Nazionale, Spoleto Festival Dei Due Mondi
Please be advised that dates and times may be subject to change.
See www.festivaldispoleto.com for updates.
Lesjeux sont faits, rien ne va plus .
Stranded in the quagmire of the sleepy Russian province, entangled in their failures, all the characters in Zio Vanja are discontented, unhappy, surviving to themselves.
It is astonishing that on this pile of ruins Chekhov managed to to build his strongest, hardest, driest, clearest, most essential text. And, in the end, the most ruthless. Desolations, defeats, depressions. "Finished is the play," says Astrov. "But we must continue to living," concludes Sonja.
In no other text do characters go so to deep into their black holes. They look inside and ask themselves, "How did I get to to this point? What happened to me?" They rummage through their past in search of the reason for their drift, search aloud for the reasons for their disaster, as if they need to ascertain it, reaffirm it, in a sense metabolize it. It is not the arrival of Serebrjakov with his young wife Elena to create upheaval. When the curtain rises, everything has already happened. There is a 'before' that weighs on everyone. They know it, and over the course of the four acts they try to come to terms with it. They speak to themselves more and earlier than to others, even though others are there to hear them. They choose inadequate interlocutors, such as Astrov in the opening dialogue with the njanja Marina: to his long examination of conscience she replies, "Do you want to eat something?" All essentially feel that 'before' is inescapable and go no further. They ascertain. They record. They brood. For everyone to a certain point in life there was a stop. And they never moved from there. Astrov with his grueling job as district doctor among filthy izbe and ignorant peasants. Vanya with his humiliating routine as an administrator (almost a sharecropper) among cottage cheese and canned goods. Serebrjakov reduced from distinguished lecturer to miserable pensioner. Elena young wife of a cranky old man. Sonja forced to to come to terms with her ugliness. "I don't feel like anything, I don't fit in with anyone," Astrov begins. "I'm the same as I've always been, in fact I've gotten worse, I don't do anything, I grumble all day like an old fart," says Vanya. "My life is over, I am out of the game," says Serebrjakov. "I'm a bore, someone who doesn't count," says Elena. "I have no hope, none!" says Sonja.
to unlike the Seagull, where there are two women, Maša and Arkadina, eager for passion, ready to to put themselves on the line, here all desire seems weak, dull. Eros is sluggish, it is all verbal, as in Vanya's purely rhetorical outbursts for Elena: "Let me tell you about my love, don't reject me, this is enough for me to feel immensely happy." But she to good reason is annoyed by this and responds with a dry, "What torture...." Astrov is more concrete: he is drawn to Elena's beauty, "I can't be indifferent to her," but realizes that "it's not true love, it's not true bonding." His attempts to seduce her, which are also quite clumsy, boil down to to a kiss and to a hypothetical date in the state forest, which they both know is completely unattainable. Even Elena says she is "a little in love" with Astrov, (that "a little " would be enough to understand the fragility of that falling in love). Her kiss in Act IV is more of a farewell than a promise. And he settles, as a reminder, for a pencil that he slips out of Astrov's pocket. Words, words, words. Love in Zio Vanja is limited to bouquets of roses carried to disproportionately, to pencils removed from a pocket. Chekhov recommends to Stanislavsky-Astrov, who instead would like some fire in the scenes with Knipper-Elena: no ardor, no momentum, a thread of boredom and the shadow of departure.
This flat calm is shaken from time to time from flashes of repressed fantasies, of prickly memories. In Vanya the youthful passion for Elena resurfaces ("She was seventeen, I was thirty-seven. Why didn't I fall in love, didn't I get engaged then?"): he dreams of hugging her during the storm, of consoling her, of holding her in his arms, but then he sinks into his nebulous helplessness. Elena dreams, too: she would like to go far away "to forget those sleepy faces of yours, those unbearable speeches, to forget for a moment that you exist," but she, too, is vague, choosing fidelity to her "old husband," even though she confesses to Sonja that she longs for a young one. These are dreams suspended in thin air, vanishing at once and leaving a bitter taste in the mouth.
Of course, over everything dominates Sonja's finaladagio : "We must continue to living. We will live a long, long series of days, of endless evenings, we will patiently endure the trials that will befall us." There are no suicides here as in Ivanov or The Seagull. "They are gone": leaving or staying makes no difference. "Finished the play," Astrov repeats. Those who leave drag with them a baggage of frustrations and misunderstandings; those who stay sink into the grayness of a routine without perspective. Two ways of not being. But "we must continue to living."
The timing of Zio Vanja. The attack is slow: Drowsiness, laziness, heat, walks, chatter, slight discontent, an initial ecological lecture by Astrov ("When I pass by the trees I saved from the axe or when I hear my young forest fluttering , I realize that the climate in which I live also depends a little from on me") and a harsh final lunge by Elena that goes in the same direction, implicating everyone present ("you stupidly destroy the forests and before long the earth will be deserted, in the same way you stupidly destroy feelings...in all of you there is an eagerness for destruction"). The theme of destruction, which closes the first act and is taken up several times from Astrov ("No one has direct, free, clean relations with nature and people anymore") hovers throughout the text, corrodes, pollutes relations like an ancient mold, which has now taken hold and it is impossible from to eradicate.
Act 2. The nocturne act. It has a Mozartian pattern: subdued, light, it comes on and then fades, goes off. Chekhov has a penchant for dimness. The fourth act of The Seagull (Nina's farewell), the second and third acts of Three Sisters (the missed carnival and the fire), the third act of The Garden (the dance). Here the characters all tiptoe in and out, some go to to sleep, some wake up. Outside there is a storm. Inside there is restlessness. The night of Zio Vanja is a masterpiece of cross-rhythms: irritations and whispers, guitar chords and janitor's blows, drunkenness and reproaches, confidences and tears, hugs and eventually silence. Playing the piano? "You can't!" Curtain.
Act III. It is the act of the jokes. Vanya reveals himself to be a great jester, he gives to all his jocularity. At first he plays the joker with Elena ("Let yourself go at least once in your life, throw yourself to headlong into passion"), then he becomes a 'white clown' with the pathetic bouquet of roses while Elena is in Astrov's arms (an overused gag, but always impressive), finally he goes 'poof' as a real 'red clown' with a gun that really looks fake from so improbable it is, and unleashes all his truncated repressed hysteria by attacking an outraged Serebrjakov (who by the way has every reason in proposing the sale of house and lands with a view to a more fruitful investment: he is a more educated and less businesslike Lopakhin, but must back down in the face of the devilishness of the 'red clown').
Act 4. Requiem. Chekhov rejects solutions of convenience, distances himself from his clichés. Suicide for Vanya? Meaningless old trick. And then Astrov is adamant: be consistent, you are a loser as I am, this lurid life has crushed us, outside there is no getting out. Of us in a few years they will say we were assholes? That old story too. Who cares. Useless to think about it. Rather (fifty years before Godot), who knows how hot it is in Africa now. Antisentimental par excellence, Chekhov truncates the patheticism of goodbyes by diluting them between yawns, guitar chords and glances at the map of Africa.
The estate will continue to centering a few liters of linseed oil and some ridiculous cottage cheese. "Everything will be the same as before," Vanja says, although nothing will be the same. The house will continue to to be a huge labyrinth of twenty-six rooms where you get lost, where you never find anyone, where above all there is no peace: a trap for four old zombies entrenched in their discontents, their fixations, their unresolved existential catastrophe. Everything as before, though nothing will be as before.
Text by Fausto Malcovati
He graduated from the School of the Teatro Stabile of Turin in 2012. In his path he alternates between acting and theater directing. In these first ten years of directing work he stands out for his ability and productivity, winning to just 32 years old the Italian theater critics' award. Since September 2021 he has been teaching coordinator of the school of the Teatro Stabile di Torino and since 2022 Artistic Director of the San Ginesio Festival. Among the shows from he directed are. Spettri di Ibsen (Venice Biennale 2018), Williams' The Glass Zoo, Lorca's La casa di Bernarda Alba , D'Annunzio's La città morta, Strindberg's La signorina Giulia (Festival dei Due Mondi 2021) and Molière's Il Misantropo. He also works on contemporary drama texts and inopera opera. In 2022 together with the Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria he begins a trilogy on Anton Čechov. First stage of the three-year project is. Il gabbiano. In the same year he is a finalist candidate for the Ubu Prize for Best Director with La signorina Giulia. In 2023 he directs . Zio Vanja, the second stage of the Čechov Project, a play with which he is a finalist candidate for best director at the Ubu 2023. The last chapter of the trilogy is The Cherry Orchard (2024).
Giordano Domenico Agrusta
BornMarch 7, 1984 to Grottaglie in the province of Taranto. After graduation he left for Milan where he studied Philosophy and specialized in Cognitive Neuroscience. After finishing his studies, he moved to Terni in 2008 to study acting with Gastone Moschin, Emanuela Moschin and Marzia Ubaldi. He founded the company Malabranca Teatro, with Daniele Menghini, Ludovico Rohl and Cristina Daniele. In 2015 he joined to the actors company of the Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria. He works with Danilo Nigrelli, Michele Placido, Andrea Baracco. He collaborates with several private companies and theatrical production bodies, including Marche Teatro, Teatri di Roma, Teatro alla Scala. In 2022 he was part of the cast of Il gabbiano directed by Leonardo Lidi, the first stage of the Čechov Project.
Maurizio Cardillo
Sicilian, he is an actor and author. He has worked as an actor with Teatro dell'Elfo, Teatri di Vita, Teatro Stabile di Bologna, Teatro Stabile di Bolzano, ErosAntEros, and has been directed from Elena Bucci, Gigi Dall'Aglio, Luigi Gozzi, Renato Carpentieri, Paolo Billi and others. From 2007 to the present, he has participated to numerous shows of the company Le Belle Bandiere, a formation with which he continues to to collaborate. From 2010 to the present, he has collaborated frequently, as actor and author, with Tra un Atto e l'altro by Francesca Mazza and Angela Malfitano and Liberty by Elena di Gioia. For the Concert Society of Parma he wrote and directed Lettera to my father (from Kafka) with Ugo Pagliai. In 2022 he was part of the cast of Il gabbiano directed by Leonardo Lidi, the first stage of the Čechov Project.
IlariaFalini
Diplomedfrom the University Theater Center in Perugia with masters including L. Flaszen, G. Bogdanov, N. Karpov and M. Ferrero, she continued her training with directors V. Schiavelli, C. Pezzoli, to. Santagata and L. Ronconi under whose direction he attended the Course of Excellence at the Santa Cristina Theater Center. She has worked in several productions directed by, among others, directors N. Bruschetta, R. Carpentieri, W. Le Moli, F. Pepe and F. Dini. In 2021 she plays Kristine in the play La Signorina Giulia directed by Leonardo Lidi, a TSU production, which premiered at the 64th edition of Festival dei Due Mondi. In 2022 she is part of the cast of Il gabbiano directed by Leonardo Lidi, the first stage of the Čechov Project.
AngelaMalfitano
Actressand director, she began to working with Leo De Berardinis, her teacher, to followed by Thierry Salmon, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Claudio Morganti, Dario Fo, Andrea Adriatico, Fabrizio Arcuri, Marco Sgrosso, Marco Baliani, Mimmo Sorrentino, Mattew Lenton. He won the Young European Artists Award in 1992. In 1999 he founded Tra un atto e l'altro with Francesca Mazza and directs productions and reviews also in the areas of social and gender culture. He curates theater projects with networks of artists and collaborates as a lecturer with Unipv and Unibo. He produces contemporary dramaturgy and on outstanding figures of the territory with Regione Emilia Romagna, Città Metropolitana di Bologna and Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione. In 2022 he is part of the cast of Il gabbiano directed by Leonardo Lidi, the first stage of the Čechov Project.
FrancescaMazza
Diplomaat the School directed from Alessandra Galante Garrone, from 1983 to 1995 she worked in Leo de Berardinis' shows. Later, among others, she worked with the company Fanny & Alexander, with Teatri di Vita, with Accademia degli Artefatti, with Teatro stabile del Veneto, Teatro stabile di Roma, Teatro Stabile di Torino, ERT Emilia Romagna Teatri, Radiotre Rai. She won the UBU Award as best supporting actress for the 2004/2005 season. In 2010 she won the UBU Award as best leading actress with West and the Ravenhill Project shows Shoot/Find the Treasure/Repeat. She was directed from Leonardo Lidi in La casa di Bernarda Alba, in Molière's Il misantropo and in. Il gabbiano, the first stage of the three-year Project dedicated to Čechov.
MarioPirrello
Shegraduated in 1997 from the school of the Teatro Stabile di Torino directed from L. Ronconi. to theater among others she collaborates with M. Martone, C. Longhi, M. Avogadro, V. Malosti, G. Lavia, F. Arcuri, M. di Mauro, F. Lagi, P.L. Pisano, M. Lenton, D. Pitoiset, P. Bausch. In 2018 he is among the performers in Spectres, the winning show of the Venice Biennale College Directors, directed from Leonardo Lidi, with whom he also collaborates the following year in Lo z_oo di Vetro_ from T. Williams and in 2020 in La città morta from G. D'Annunzio. In Cinema he is directed from M.T Giordana in Yara, from S. Godano in Marilyn ha gli occhi neri, from D. Argento for Occhiali neri and from S. Sollima for Adagio. For television, his latest works include Il Commissario Ricciardi (to. D'Alatri), Esterno Notte ( M. Bellocchio), Il Circeo (to. Molaioli), Suburra (G. Capotondi_)_, SuperSex (M. Rovere).
Tino Rossi
Bornin 1955 in the province of Piacenza, he began to doing theater in 1980 to Cremona with a local company. In 1987 he started to his own company Quarta Parete, still active today, collaborating with other companies in the area. In 1993 he graduated as a voice actor at the Centro Teatro Attivo in Milan. He takes part to in numerous theater stages, among many: with Carmelo Rifici, Cesar Brie, Armando Punzo, Serena Sinigaglia, Massimo Popolizio, Salvatore La Ruina and Michele Di Mauro. He has collaborated to plays with Carmelo Rifici and Leonardo Lidi and has taken part in a number of films, including a film by Marco Bellocchio. In 2022 he is directed from Leonardo Lidi in Il gabbiano, the first stage of the Chekhov Project.
MassimilianoSpeziani
HystrioAward for Interpretation 2018. Acting directed by, among others, from Giancarlo. Cobelli, Luca Ronconi, Massimo Castri, Antonio Latella, Federico Tiezzi, Mario Martone, Carmelo Rifici. He has worked with Alfonso Santagata's Katzenmacher company with which he received the UBU in 1997. Self produces Il Memorioso. A Short Guide to the Memory of the Good which replicates from 10 years. Since 2000 the association with playwrights R. Gabrielli and R. M. Molinari. During the lockdown he creates the Teatro in Condominio experience and No Miracle to Milano text by Gabrielli is born. Among his most recent works as an actor: The Tragedy of the Avenger (Donnellan) The Valley of Eden (Latella), Combatants (Gabrielli/Ammendola), Child Duck Chronicles (Dall'Aglio). In 2022 he is directed from Leonardo Lidi in Il gabbiano, the first stage of the Chekhov Project.
GiulianaVigogna
Shegraduated in 2014 from the Silvio d'Amico Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome; she then attended the advanced training course at the Santacristina Theater Center and the specialization course at the Teatro di Roma. In 2016, Antonio Latella chose her for Santa Estasi (UBU prize for best show and best group of actors under 30). She collaborates with ERT for The Book of Job directed by P. Babina and 1984 directed from M. Lenton; in 2018 she is Daphne in Latella's Aminta. In 2019 she begins her collaboration with Leonardo Lidi for: Il dito (Festival delle Colline Torinesi); The Dead City and. Il lampadario (Venice Biennale); La casa di Bernarda Alba (Teatro Stabile di Torino); La signorina Giulia (Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria); Il Misantropo (Teatro Stabile di Torino); and. Il gabbiano, first stage of the three-year Project dedicated to Čechov (Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria, ERT, Teatro Stabile di Torino).
Leonardo Lidi
Leonardo Lidi
Liv Ferracchiati, Alice Raffaelli
#SIneNOmine
Luca Marinelli
Fabian Jung
Antonio Latella
.webp){kind=logo}
