Essentially, I am an author-actor. I write for myself, for my body and voice. I compose the dramaturgy and modify it as the show finds its form until it acquires a “definite” status. The audience is one of my greatest concerns. I want the audience to react – for this reason I accurately choose a theme, select writing strategies, combine different materials together and give voice to contradictory, sometimes unpleasant and never coherent, points of view. I want to produce an emotional, but also political and intellectual reaction. The actor on stage must be responsible for what he says and does and should master the issue at the core of the performance. My approach is the same even why I write in collaboration with other artists. For most of my works, the audience won’t see simple characters on stage, but the author or the authors themselves.
Daniele Timpano (Rome, 1974) is an author, actor and director. He wrote and performed Teneramente Tattico; Profondo dispari; Oreste from Euripides; caccia ‘L drago from Tolkien; Gli uccisori del chiaro di luna from Marinetti and Majakovskij; Dux in scatola; Ecce robot!, inspired to Go Nagai; Risorgimento pop (co-written with Marco Andreoli); Sì l’ammore no (co-written with Elvira Frosini); Aldo morto. Two of his works, Dux in scatola and Risorgimento pop, were translated and performed in Paris for the project “Face à face” 2011 and together with Aldo Morto they form a trilogy published by Titivillus in 2012 under the title “Storia Cadaverica d’Italia”. In 2013 he developed the project “Aldo morto 54” in collaboration with Rome’s Teatro dell’Orologio, Kataklisma, Fondazione Romaeuropa. //danieletimpano.blogspot.com
Theatre works
2013 / ALDO MORTO 54 / 54 giorni di reclusione; written by Daniele Timpano and Elvira Frosini, a special project inspired to “Aldo morto / tragedia” by D. Timpano and realized in collaboration with Rome’s Teatro dell’Orologio, Kataklisma, Fondazione Romaeuropa; 54 repeats of the show “Aldo morto” in streaming on the web site www.aldomorto54.it for 54 days of self-reclusion in a cell built in a theatre; “Aldo Morto 54” won the “Nico Garrone” Award 2013 for special projects.
2013 / Zombitudine; written by Elvira Frosini and Daniele Timpano
2011 / Aldo morto / Tragedia; written by Daniele Timpano; first staged: 13 April 2012, at Teatro Palladium, Rome; published by Titivillus in the book “Storia cadaverica d’Italia” (2012); special mention IN-BOX Award 2012, awarded with the RETE CRITICA Prize 2012, shortlisted for the Ubu Award 2012 for “Best Italian new show”.
2009 / Sì l’ammore no; written by Elvira Frosini and Daniele Timpano; first staged: September 2009, Teatro India, Rome; shortlisted for the Tuttoteatro.com Award for the scenic arts “Dante Cappelletti” Award 2008.
2009 / Risorgimento pop / Memorie e amnesie conferite ad una gamba; written by Marco Andreoli and Daniele Timpano; first staged: June 2009, XII Festival “Primavera dei teatri”, Castrovillari (Cosenza); published by Titivillus in the volume “Storia cadaverica d’Italia” (2012).
2007 / Ecce robot! Cronaca di un’invasione; first staged: July 2007, at Festival Inequilibrio, Castiglioncello (Livorno), published by Minimum Fax (2009) in the anthology “Senza corpo – voci dalla nuova scena italiana” edited by Debora Pietrobono.
2006 / Dux in scatola / Autobiografia d’oltretomba di Mussolini Benito; first staged: January 2006, at La Città del Teatro, Cascina (Pisa); published by Coniglio Editore (2006), on the theatre magazine Hystrio (2008) and in the volume “Storia cadaverica d’Italia”, Titivillus (2012); shortlisted for the Scenario Award 2005 and Vertigine Award in 2010.
2005 / Gli uccisori del chiaro di luna / Cantata non intonata per F. T. Marinetti e V. Majakovskij; first staged: October 2005, at “Ubu settete! Fiera di alterità teatrali”, IV edition, RialtoSantambrogio, Rome.
2003 / Caccia ‘L drago / Fabula in musica; first staged: October 2003, at “Ubu settete! Fiera di alterità teatrali”, II edition, Villa Lazzaroni, Rome; awarded with the “Le voci dell’anima – incontri teatrali” Award in Rimini, 2005.
2001 / Oreste; first staged: May 2001, at Il Cantiere, Rome.
2001 / Per amarti meglio.
2000 / Profondo dispari; first staged: May 2000, at Teatro Blackgull, Rome; Daniele Timpano: special prize as best actor at the “Contrari al lungo” Award, III edition, 2003.
1999 / Teneramente Tattico; first staged: October 1999, at Teatro dei Contrari, Rome; special mention at the “Contrari al lungo” Award 1999, II edition; F. La scala awarded with best supporting actress prize at the “Schegge d’autore” Festival, 2003.
1998 / Storie di un Cirano di pezza; first staged: October 1998, at Teatro Duse, Rome.
ALDO MORTO
ALDO MORTO / Tragedia (ALDO DEAD / Tragedy) An actor born in the ’70 and with no personal recollection of those years, chooses a traumatic event for Italy, the tragic kidnapping and killing of Aldo Moro at the hand of the Red Brigades in 1978, to analyse the impact of the event on Italian’s imaginary.
– Extracts from Aldo morto –
Scene 17. Epilogue. Martyrdom and tears.
I take the microphone and hold it tight in my hands, almost hidden among my fingers intertwined as f in prayer. In the following scene I use a microphone. The voice is almost a murmur.
They are coming. They are bad and they are a lot. They are red. They are ugly. They are dwarfs with moustaches. The red brigades are here. They swoop on him. They tear his flesh and limbs apart with hooks, but he, Super Santos Aldo, takes them and put them back in their place, he throws a piece of flesh from his love handles in their faces, in the red dwarfs’ faces (do you see? He receives hatred and gives love!); then they grab him and make him lie on the wheel, they spread him with colza oil and set light to him but it is useless, instead of Aldo Moro, 1500 men die; then they tie a stone to his neck and drown him in the Tiber but Super Santos Aldo doesn’t drown because St. Michael saves him by order of Pope Paul VI; so they behead him but his (dick)head does not fall off; so they ask, they beg God, “kill him for us” and God himself (one of the three persons he is) descends, or better, someone disguised as God, a convincing guy with a fake white beard – Aldo is disappointed when he sees God torturing him and gets depressed and this time he almost gets killed because he is not sure whether to ask God for help as God himself is killing him – and the fake old God orders them to put naked Aldo in a box, or rather in a crib, a crib of burning pitch and resin the BR carry around the city screaming: “Ecce Moro! Ecce Moro” as they look for a Lenin or Gramschic statue, but in the end they settle for Mazzini at the Circus Maximus and tell him “ask the living God for forgiveness and repent for the historic compromise” but he destroys the statue with a breath and God dies from fear, or he suffers a heart attack, and is carried away from this story; then they shut him for 8 hours in a furnace on the Via Cassia where bricks are fired but Aldo is not overcooked in the end and sings for hours with the furnace’s angels “O bianco fiore, simbol d’amore”; then they get venomous snakes from a snake hunter comrade from the Abruzzi, but the snakes turn against the snake hunter and kill him and Aldo says he is sorry because he doesn’t like violence; then they cut off his nipples and milk instead of blood comes out of the wounds and so they sew them up, oh dear, so scary; poor BR red dwarfs, what a fright; but Aldo is alive and he talks and talks and talks and talks again, he’s been talking all the time and now the dwarfs’ patience is running out so they cut off his tongue but the tongue keeps talking and talking and talking even if they cut it, the stump of the tongue jumps and ferociously blinds four dwarfs; they call the BR archers who shoot two arrows at his heart and one at his side but he doesn’t die, Super Santos Aldo doesn’t die, no, he doesn’t die.
In the end, exhausted and exasperated, fearing to be discovered, they bring him into a garage and she is there: the red Renault 4. “We set you free, mister President. We bring you home”. “Oh, joy! Thank you! Thank you!”. ”Please, make yourself comfortable, mister President”. Rat-a-tat. Tat-tat. Tat-tat. Ah! Moro! Oh, “Justice” is done! In a red Renault 4. March, April, May. End of the battle. In a Renault 4. In a R4. R4: kidnapped and sunk. Victory. Libertas. Libertas. Libertas.
