If I knew what I do when I sit down and write, I’d like it to be this way: that my mind or my soul reached the spectator’s or the reader’s mind.
I wish that there weren’t physical mediation between us, me and you, whoever you are. I’d be satisfied if I knew that my artistic activity were not only something well done or aspiring to sanctity, but a kind of hypnotic mechanism bringing together our little souls. And that this were an enchanted moment and we could spend high quality time together: a time where the essential is present.
Lucia Calamaro, playwright, director and actress, studied in Paris with Thomas Richard, Le Coq, Philippe Gaullier. She started off in Montevideo, Uruguay, where she directed a small experimental theatre company. Her shows were influenced by her personal doubts and novels by Boris Vian, Juan Carlos Onetti, Fernando Pessoa, Augusto Roa Bastos. In 1998 in Paris she took part to the creation of Ethnoscenologie (comparative study of live performances) with sociologist Jean Duvignaud and professor Jean Marie Pradier, founders of the discipline. She briefly studied Clown with Philippe Gaullier and Gabriel Chame from Argentina. In 2001 she returned to Rome with a postgraduate grant on Ancient Dramaturgy and Versification. She works as an actress for Giuseppe Marini and in 2003 founds the company Malebolge beginning her career as a playwright
Theatre works
2003/Medea, tracce, from Euripides; first staged in Teatro Politecnico, Rome.
2003/Woyzeck; first staged in Villaggio Globale, Rome.
2004/Guerra; first staged in Villaggio Globale, Rome.
2005/Cattivi maestri; first staged in Rialto Santambrogio, Rome.
2006/Tumore, uno spettacolo desolato; first staged in Rialto Santambrogio, Rome.
2008/Magick, autobiografia della vergogna, first staged in Rome, Teatro India
2011/L’origine del mondo, ritratto di un interno; first staged in Rome, Teatro India.
2014/Diario del tempo. L’epopea quotidiana; firsta staged in Rome, Teatro India.
L’origine del mondo, ritratto di un interno
In the end our children are the only concrete and familiar evidence that we can be absolute authors of a Beginning. And from that great act of vitality we find our own Beginning.
I investigate the conscience of a Mother, what she knows about it, in spite of herself. I investigate the mortified states of mind of an “adultized” Daughter, her absence of models, her tenacity. I sketch the indifference, the rage and the helplessness of all the others, those who have to deal with a depressed person, not knowing how to do it. In the meanwhile, life goes on, even though in a different way.
3 women: mother, daughter, grandmother
– Extracts from L’origine del mondo. Ritratto di un interno –
Daria: I may have an idea, a method, I believe I do, maybe I am wrong, but…
If any person emotionally attracted by another might have his psychological biography, a ten-page report should suffice, maybe even less. It could explain in detail the five or six things that the subject can’t handle for personal reasons. Those interested in approaching the subject could follow some good advice and avoid to recreate the dynamics unbearable for the subject. It would help. It would have helped me. A lot.
She leans on the table, puts the bags down, the fruit rolls out of the bags.
She straightens up and lights up a cigarette she kept in her chignon. She lets herself fall down on the table again:
Daria: DOCTOR I FEEL LIKE A JAR BY MORANDI
do you know him? Do you remember him?
Otherwise, have a look at it tonight, Doctor
There are… lighter and lighter colours on secondary objects, the light does all the job in those paintings, not things – things speak of something else, they do not express anything, but freeze in silence, they are haunted by infinitesimal speechless qualities… unthinkable (mutters)
Today began just like this
One of those days when the slightest sound,
(voice turns more and more internal) Every distraction, colour, accumulation…
…intolerable
Well today I’d feel comfortable only in a still life
not just any
a Morandi
Morandi, the bottles’guy
(takes out of the raincoat a picture of Morandi, she shows it and speaks with the cigarette in her mouth)
One of those still lives with a light background
But never white
Never totally white
Not even dirty
If anything, dusty
(she puts the picture down)
Id’ say the world in there is … (voice turns more and more internal) essential, sober, silent, motionless
A piece, another piece, I …
Our possible dialogues… so inaudible …
Even light stands still.
Enough for today
…unbearable
Doctor: Yes, Daria, I can see that today you feel a little tired, a little abandoned, like a bottle left there…
Daria: No, a bottle has ambitions, in spite of all, even if it’s empty it is slender, it pushes to, it tends to something… this ascesis does not fit.
Today I feel just like a jar… (voice turns more and more internal) humble, occasional, a bit crushed, insignificant in itself, so… Without qualities.
Doctor: Without qualities… do you mean indefinite, faded into the background?
Daria: If you wish, I’d say… vanished into, rather than faded into.
Doctor: And how do you see, how do you imagine this place, how do you… here, how does it look like this place where you feel, you are, let’s say you are, yes, you are so “vanished”… if I say melted DARIA would it sound appropriate to you?
Daria: Monochrome, atonal, damp and muffled, (voice turns more and more internal) a grey cotton wool not completely refusing you but surely indistinct. We are all in it, me, you… melted… in silence.
It is strange to talk from there, it is useless (mutters)
Doctor: Does it mean that you feel you are not attached to yourself or anything around you?
Daria: It’s different, it’s like nobody existed, as if the world were disappearing, erased, (voice turns more and more internal) a spot of ink on a paper tissue plunged into water, you nearly can’t see it any more, and if you pull it out of the water you will tear it up, there’s nothing to be done and there is no pain, zero torment, only insubstantiality (mutters).
Doctor: And what could make it solid, different and in colour again?
Daria:: If I knew it… you tell me.
Doctor: Think about it Daria.
Daria (unsure) Well, it sounds like a cliché but when it happened to me… I’d say love.
Doctor: For whom?
Daria: I’d say for one’s children.
Doctor: Yes Daria, it’s all right, it is enough for today.
