IL CORTILE
by > spiro scimone
with > francesco sframeli > spiro scimone > gianluca cesale
direction > valerio binasco
set designer and costumist > titina maselli
light designer > beatrice ficalbi
assistant direction > leonardo pischedda
assistant set and costumes > barbara bessi
photo credits > marco caselli nirmal
technical director > santo pinizzotto
administration > giovanni scimone
production > compagnia scimone sframeli > fondazione orestiadi gibellina >
festival d’automne à paris > kunsten festival des arts de bruxelles >
théâtre garonne de toulouse
ubu prize 2004 ” new italian text “
“Il Cortile” (The Courtyard) is a work of great truth and is at the same time totally surreal. The lead characters live amongst broken motorcycles and rubbish in a waste dump which is resonant of some desolate, impoverished urban suburb. They are tormented by physical decline and overwhelmed by a sort of nostalgia for better times. What is evoked is a grotesque every day existence, not dissimilar to reality, the degradation and anguish that surrounds them.
Peppe, Tano and Uno (a type) have lost all sense of time, but not their great will to live. They are three big children in their small gestures, their need to be listened to, their taste for games. Although desperate in appearance, in their courtyard no one can take away their love of play. We don’t know where they come from, or what the relationship is between them. The piece alternates cruel abstraction with poetic realism, in its’ petty obsession with everyday things it brings up today’s most bitter questions, with a comic rhythm and a precision that is impossible to get away from. Tragedy can also have its’ hilarious side: a lot of laughter, but never without being thought provoking too.
“So instead of refering us at the usual Pinter, we must mention Beckett, though as in previous works, it’s not just a suggestion or a gift, because the issue is different with the two teachers, and diverges the orchestration of dialogues, even in the Italian of this work, researching musicality of the pieces written in Messinese, using small ellipses to camouflage the particles that run one to the other, while evolving a plot concise frantic questions and answers that do not explain. Yet the surreal nature and naturalness in dealing with extreme situations evoke a sense of wonder to read already, and will not cease to be funny in the duets stage of Spiro Scimone and Francesco Sframeli inseparable, although the tragedy is more imminent than ever, even is flaunted as the moving one step further, according to the preference of the great Irish works between tears and laughter, as Fin de partie and Oh les beaux jours, or that the entrusted film of a king of comedy as Buster Keaton. ”
[Franco Quadri introduction to”Il cortile” by Spiro Scimone Ubulibri edition – La collanina 26]
The piece won the UBU prize 2004 New Italian Text.