• Italian

Octavian Taddei

Would you briefly describe what is your job?

Let me give an little introduction: I think it was 1987, I attended a regional training course for ” Socio-Cultural-Operator”. It summarizes very well how I feel in general even though over the years my binary has changed, I moved more towards theater. I feel somehow a man who works in a social and cultural level and I think the two things constantly intersect.

How old were you in 1987?

I was 20 years old, I had just finished high school. Since then I started working in the social filed, but inside me I had a passion for theater. Always, at the first parish experience that I remember with great affection: getting ready in a few days parodies of sometimes very important works, as “The Betrothed”, or personate characters of the country. My best was a caretaker of the school. There it began a passion, let us do not say for theater, but for acting as a game. From this bizarre beginning things have developed: I continued to work in social field, I continued to do theater as a hobby. Then it happened that I was in a relatively short period in Bologna, where I worked as an educator in the social field with at-risk children. Once again, I speak of the ’93-94, I had the opportunity to meet people with whom I made Horizon, a community project for a period of one year.

Was it always a project in the social field?

It was oriented to the training of operators and the establishment of new cooperatives, the intervention was aimed at children with disabilities in post-primary education. In the meantime I graduated social worker, a strange thing that has nothing to do with what I do, and did the social cooperative La Formica. In those years there was nothing either in Val Vibrata, nor in the Abruzzo region in terms of socio-rehabilitation day centers, so we called them right at the time, still for me it makes more sense than to call them “socio-educational” term that I does not really know what it means. “Social Rehabilitation” probably has a different sense, more effective, even if the terms leave things as they are.

In the meantime, did you continue to cultivate your passion for Theater?

Years earlier in Nereto I founded an amateur theater company named “Tra di noi” , and I did works of a certain level – “Il Tartufo”, something by De Filippo – in short, we did not joke, we did pretty seriously though still as amateurs. When I moved to Bologna, I temporarily abandoned Theater, although I tried to find something there too. Just got back, I took the stage with the old company, that meanwhile, had been transformed. We set the scene for “Non ti Pago” by De Filippo, in neretese dialect, which was a tremendous success because we managed to unite the theatrical version of the film with Eduardo. From the theatrical point of view was not anything fancy, but we were innovative in those years, at least in the transaction that we were able to achieve.

When did social commitment and passion for Theatre have joined?

When the project of the social cooperative La Formica has taken more and more strength. At the beginning there was nothing and I went around with my clipboard to explain the project to the Mayors of the Val Vibrata that were not always listening to me. After this first period, things changed better at a political level: in Vibrata succeeded by new generations of Representatives and many women, this meant more openness and attention to social problems, it was really a revolution. Thus began the real work in the center and have added many activities including the theater. It seemed the most natural thing, a steal, because I saw that the theatrical play was interesting to boys, to the point of giving birth to the “Teatro delle Formiche”. In ’99 also born Terrateatro, a fundamental part of my artistic and personal experience. There was the intention of giving a different cut than in the past, to overcome that amateur attitude and create something more important. Terrateatro “Teatro delle formiche” have begun to walk quite parallel streets , until in 2001, during a show in the trilogy inspired by “Waiting for Godot”, the two groups combined and integrated. The work was titled En Attendant, the show very particular, a central plan, I also quite bold.

With the two companies how many shows did you stage?

With Terrateatro we staged thirteen shows, with “Teatro delle Formiche”, I always place the imperative to make at least one show a year. In fact we are almost forced, because both Terrateatro and the social cooperative La Formica, produce and organize theater festivals: the one by Terrateatro in Giulianova, is “Terre di Teatri” – but in the past has called “Rievocazioni” and “Terre Galleggianti” before – that of Formica is “Teatri Paralleli” that for the second year is held in Sant’Omero. As hosts and organizers we must be there, we are somehow compelled to produce shows, even when there is no money, which is most of the time.

There’s this strange combination in you: do you feel a social worker provided to the theater or a social “thespian” ?

I can not answer, for me is an open conflict.

Why do you speak of a conflict? I thought they were areas that are mutually enriching …

It is a conflict because I would leave both every day. They are extraordinary experiences, full, intense emotionally and mentally, but they consume you. The conflict, for me a real paradox, is born from this passion that fills and empties at the same time you have. If you are paid to the social rather than the theater can not say. If I were to think chronologically would say I’m a thespian paid to the social, but probably I’m wrong. In any case, it is this paradox that keeps me going. Then, I think I will never leave the theater in its various forms, is a wonderful tool to communicate with others.

What was the time when you thought that this could be your way?

If you mean the Teatro Sociale, was the third show of the trilogy of Waiting for Godot, Lucky dreams, made by students of Teatro della Formica. It had a completeness, a drama, a probably more mature direction, the boys had entered the play, then the level of interpretation had become important, dignified. We had the opportunity to work in important dresses, for example, I quote the Festival of Montone, an important time for theater research because it housed great artists from all over Europe. There I realized the power of theater, and then the opportunity that gives to people still on the edge, ghettoized, hidden, weak, fragile, not just actors on the scene. In a social theater actor plays the character, being himself. It borrows the words of the character but it is absolutely himself. Stefania (note: the actress who performed tonight) during the monologue of the mother, what I call “I was waiting for my son”, she starts crying for real because she is herself. Maybe the crying is due to the fact that the acting was wrong, but she is herself. An actor would never do so, an actor so special. At that moment there is the truth. These two roads came together slowly, in some way have also created a short circuit inside me that made me fully understand what kind of weapon is the theater. As a thespian, I can not blow this fuse with the same ease with which happens with social theater.
That said, the theater has a unique value in other areas, for example in school, with children, they learn the rules at the level of relationship with others before everyone. There are many areas in which the theater has a disruptive force, but in social work has something more because you can see the truth. Grotowski spoke always of the holy actor, an actor’s true, that enters into the character in the guts, even in the more internal, biological aspects. He is however an actor who has to work to get to that level, a long workout on himself. The actor with a disability should not make any effort. The maximum intake for an actor on the scene is to be as real as possible, but this is not conceivable to the end, because if it is true the body of the actor on stage, the story is not his, is fiction.

You have this rare privilege of working in two different areas of the theater: what can a “normal abilities” actor learn from a “different” abilities one, and vice versa?

One thing that disabled actors may teach to those normal skilled is severity. The disabled actor has a seriousness at work, which often others do not. The moment of proof for disabled actors is a moment in which he state himself, nothing and no one else, no matter the history, text, work, he is himself. He can also be a player in front of his 3-5 workmates, or in front of the director, who here becomes even more privileged, compared to a “normal” situation.
What normal actors can learn from disabled actors? Being a little ‘more reckless and brash, although it is impossible; bold in the sense that they are so pure for being able to sell themself. They too suffer of limelight, but also in that there is a level that we probably can not see and that is also difficult to interpret fully. The actor with a disability, a star on the stage, after the show he does not act, he is himself. The skilled actor that makes the star, it gives himself a tone, he wears his social mask. Mine, of course, is a provocative speech. Who runs this parallel road, knows what things are more important.

In the theater there is a social cruel paradox? The mask worn on stage, that the skilled actor takes off when they returns to the dressing room, it is not fake, it is not that greasepaint that is removed with a tissue. The purity that we see on the faces of these actors with disabilities is that they bring as a sentence in everyday life. They can not change mask, as we all do in different situations or places.

The incapacity is not by disabled actors, but it is ours. Turning around the concept: we are in need of filters, we are the one not able to relate to others as simply as possible, frank, clear. I do not know if it means getting in a suffering, as you say, perennial. The theater is a means to succeed socially, to be more understood from others, communicate themselves in a healthy way. Teatri Paralleli is an obvious example.

Is there is also a therapeutic aspect in these practices ?

I believe that theater is therapeutic in nature, for all. I have a little ‘discomfort in talking about art therapy, now very fashionable. It’s like discovering what we already know. All of us, doing theater, painting, music, we’re better. Speaking of drama therapy, drama therapy, art therapy in general want to state the obvious.

Maybe it’s a way to enslave these activities to a functionalist view in which it is easier to recognize the value, usefulness, and therefore the funding, a task than another?

If only it were so! The relationship with the agencies, and institutions in general, is not simple because the theater, somehow, break patterns. The institution may even see yourself in danger, simply because you are a free person who does not go down easily compromised, or that can not be traced within a larger design.

The theater teaches us to be free?

The theater has the ability to change a fragment, however small, of the world, to transform, at least for the time of the show and in the space of the stage. Perhaps, there is also the claim that they can change someone.

This exchange of action-reaction is the basis of the theater?

The theater is just that the relationship between actor and spectator, and nothing else, not even the story, not even the theatrical literature serves to the end. As an actor you have the presumption to change something in the viewer, at the same time the viewer wants to be changed by what happens on stage. There is this reciprocity, there is implied consent: the viewer comes to admire and applaud the actor, while the ‘actor has the explicit intention or not to upset something in the viewer.
This desire, in my opinion a bit too ‘morbid, predisposes you to something new, there is an openness to experiences unknown.

Among the projects you have accomplished, what is the one you’re closest to?

Teatri Paralleli because it is a crippled child, disabled precisely, what I care more particularly because I know I have to treat, pamper and protect. But it is clear that the Terre di Teatri, the festival that we do in the fall as a company Terrateatro in Giulianova from several years, has for me an absolutely political in the sense that it is not just a theater project and cultural heritage is something beyond. I care to both things, but especially to people with whom I share these projects, such as Cristina Cartone, with whom we conduct a battle that probably will not lead to anything except to our undoing. But, as dreamy warriors, we advance awareness of the danger. While Teatri Paralleli is a social bomb ready to explode and get to the heart of the people in Terre di Teatri we risk in first person to come under the fire of critics and institutions. One has a more social dimension, the other more political. With the first we point to change the mood of the people, with the second the society.
What I have learned over the years is that the two can work well together, because you can consider changing the society only transforming the soul of people. But it is a struggle without borders and without saving energy.

Do you feel like a Don Quixote in this your struggle?

The windmills are not the enemies, items are only moved by the wind. I do not know if I am a quixotic, I do not feel myself so, or perhaps I just could not do anything else. I think that, somehow, I have been saved by Theater …

From what?

Perhaps from a difficulty in confrontation with others in the everyday life. The theater has renewed me as a person: I was very, very shy, and closed. I still am, I believe, however, the theater gave me the opportunity to interact with others in a completely new way. It helped me to open myself, to say the things I wanted to say. Probably I started from a very selfish condition so I can not claim to be a quixotic. Maybe, rather than fight the windmills I would feel the wind.
  

I was very curious about the choice of Gogol’s Coat for your representation: a text that is hidden behind the veil of comedy an existential abyss behid that we are helpless. In your staging, how the coat is interpreted respecting to the idea of ​​social theater, compared to people who have walked the stage tonight?

For Gogol the new coat of Akakij is a new life, a chance for emancipation. The clerk Akakij, laughed by everyone, even by his housekeeper, sees an opportunity to lift that dress. It is probably still relevant today: I now have my new car, the ultra phone, the latest technological gadgets, a way to succeed socially. For Akakij, who is a naive, pure, the coat is something more. Gogol describes it as “a wife”, as if Akakij had married, as if this new person next to him, which is actually a coat, completely renovated him. I see something more interpreted by our boys, by disabled actors, I see a dispossession: I take off my coat, I’ll rob the new coat, the coat that someone has packaged. In the original tale Akakij, immediately after the theft of the new suit is forced to recover the old one and, in doing so, it is as if he recovered the old soul, its previous condition. It is a defeat that will ultimately suffer a broken heart to kill him. Here we have somehow turned the thing. The new coat is a covering to strip away to stay at the sight of all, as we are.

On behalf of your children actors, is there an awareness of these meanings?

One might wonder whether they have simply learned the part and mechanically, but the truth is that we do a rather long preparatory work. We looked at over and over again Lattuada’s film with Renato Rascel. Giancarlo, who plays the main character, was asking me questions all the time. They wrote, drew, made the reading of the text all together, extrapolated parts, that according actors were more important than others. It’s a real job, as it any company does. There is a research attitude , for which the director is not imposing his point of view but houses the other’s and reworks it.

What do you make when looking for inspiration ?

Compared to the work are often reminiscent of, things that are there and do not emerge until they have to come back. In general I find inspiration in the work. I commend the work completely, and blindly, in the sense that I almost never plan what I will do during reharsals, if anything, sometimes a vision, a pattern, then the rest comes by itself.

To know you better, tell us some of your tastes, like web sites…

I am on Internet badly, sometimes for work I saved pages I have not used any more. Among my bookmarks I have a site that talks about the breeds of cats, although I do not have cats and maybe I do not even like them.

– Magazines.

I do not buy more newspapers and magazines, I’m tired, if not something like Catarsi, the scene of diversity, a beautiful magazine that is unfortunately experiencing moments of great difficulty.

– Books, the ones in your life and those you have now on the table.

The book of my life is One Hundred Years of Solitude. On the bedside table right now I have a dictionary of symbols, however, until a few days ago, there was “Vivere per raccontarla sempre” by Garcia Marquez, for me one of the geniuses of the twentieth century.

– Tv

I try to follow the news for scourging myself and for having a little picture of reality. I would love to see again the old variety shows.

– Cinema.

My favorite movie is Dr. Zhivago by David Lean. But I love Nanni Moretti, Kusturica and Paradjanov.

The last one you saw?

I saw Titus, Julie Taymor, adapted from Shakespeare and with the beautiful Jessica Lange.

– A theatrical Author?.

Beckett, because of the vacuum.

– The city where would you live.

Probably there is not for me, but if I had to choose I would say a city like New York. For me it would be folly, as only for the mere fact of saying it: if my friends would hear me saying it the would scoff at me for life, because I’ve never been attracted by the United States of America. It is my inner boundary that would be nice to face with … But if I were to choose according to my desires and my needs, I’d say I’d really like to live in the country.

– Music.

For a long time I listened to a few French and Italian singers, I love them, but I love very much popular music, and not just Italian. I can not always find, it is not simple, at least to a certain cultural significance. Then, to be sure, I have always with me classical music.

To do your job what are qualities needed, and among them what do you modestly think you have and what you would want?

The essential quality for me is being able to have a good relationship with the people I work with both in the theater, both in the social, which is a basic requirement. I do not know if I can, maybe if I have a quality it is this aspiration to succeed in establishing a completely honest relationship with the people I share life and work.

And one thing you miss?

I should give up my touchiness, being a little lighter, retrieve the idea of ​​the game, not only in theater but in general.

In your future, what would you like to find?

A wife … a child? I do not know … I’d love to find a balance.

Instead a concern?

My biggest concern is related to advancing age, and then about things that may not fit into the life, health, things very simple and obvious. And then I fear for what might happen to our planet, and then to future generations.

Last question: give us name of person who you consider funny, creative and warrior.

I would tell my father, a bricklayer, a matter not just emotional, but he would not answer any of your questions. I tell Alex Ricci who lives between Atri and Giulianova and is a great musician, blues mostly. Theater-people who work with me and Christina are all deserving of serious attention. If, however, I had no denying at this point my social nature, I would point to you a disabled person, might be a good bet for you.

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