(Milan, 20 July 1963)

Massimo Sgorbani graduated in Philosophy from Milan University and in Dramaturgy from the Civica Scuola d’Arte Drammatica “Paolo Grassi”. He wrote scripts for cinema and television together with Angelo Longoni. In 2001 the Giuria Riccione awarded him the Special Prize for “Angelo della gravità”. In 2003 he was placed second at the Fersen Award with “Il tempo ad Hanoi”, and won the “continuity special mention” at the Riccione Award for Le cose sottili nell’aria.
“Tutto scorre” won one of the Fondi la Pastora awards in 2004. In 2008 he received the Franco Enriquez Prize for dramaturgy. In 2006 he taught creative writing at the master’s degree “The art of writing” at Siena University. He has been working with the puppet company “Teatro appeso a un filo”, writing and directing several grand operas’ adaptations.

Theatre works
2009 / Innocenza, published by Editoria&Spettacolo (2009), in Due pezzi quasi comici.
2008 / Per soli uomini, first staged: 25 May 2008, Teatro Franco Parenti, Milano; published by Editoria&Spettacolo (2009), in Due pezzi quasi comici.
2004 / Angelo della gravità (un’eresia), first staged: 23 June 2004, San Giuseppe deconsecrated church, Asti; published by Ubulibri (2008) in Teatro.
2004 / Tutto scorre (una fatalità), first staged: 6 January 2004, Teatro Colosseo, Rome; published by Ubulibri (2008) in Teatro.
2005 / Le cose sottili nell’aria, first staged: 1 July 2005, Teatro Supercinema, Santarcangelo; published by Ubulibri (2008) in Teatro.
2007 / Causa di beatificazione (tre canti per voce e tempesta), first stage: 15 May 2007, Teatro Franco Parenti, Milan; published by Ubulibri (2008) in Teatro.
2008 / Nell’ardore della nostra camera (un epicedio), published by Ubulibri (2008) in Teatro.
2013 / Blondi, first staged: 22 March 2013, Piccolo Teatro Studio, Milan; soon to be published in the triptyque Innamorate dello spavento.

The speech of the congressman
A retired politician pays a prostitute for silently listening to him and his “confession”. The man tells her about his life , his relationship with politics and – above all – his obsession with “speeches” that brought him to a nervous breakdown. The prostitute, not visible on stage, turns into a substitute of the man’s wife who committed suicide a few years before. She represents that body the politician’s words feebly aspire to, as he has always been unable to transform his “speech” into life.
Monologue.

-Extracts from The speech of the congressman –

Do you remember Kennedy? John Fitzgerald. Kennedy’s skull was crushed by a bullet on a nice sunny day, he was sitting on the rear seat of the car, he was waving at the crowd and a bullet crushed his skull, Kennedy died on the spot, Kennedy could not make any statements or speeches on what turned out to be the most relevant event of his political career, being killed, I mean. Kennedy didn’t even know he was killed because the bullet crushed his skull and probably the last thing he remembered was the crowd waving at him. Sitting next to Kennedy was his wife Jacqueline, she was sitting next to Kennedy, I have always wondered how Jacqueline lived those moments, one moment they were waving at the crowd on a nice sunny day and the other one Kennedy was dead next to her. I wonder what happened to Jacqueline, she was so close to her husband at the moment the shots were fired, when the bullet crushed the skull, and surely some pieces of the brain, the so-called grey matter, ended on Jacqueline, on Jacqueline’s face, Jacqueline was waving at the crowd and she found herself covered with Kennedy’s blood and brain and in the videos you see Jacqueline crawling, she crawls and moves like that into the car, she tries to hide, to take cover, Jacqueline crawling like an animal. There you see the end of politics, you see the moment the speech is interrupted, is crushed and reduced to bits, you see it for what it is, an incredibly fast backwards race, an immediate return to a primordial dimension, looking for shelter, looking for a den, crawling like an animal. (pause) What happened because of an external object, I mean because of the bullet, what happened because of that bullet in the end could have happened for internal causes, caused by the speech growing and expanding beyond measure, the enormously grown speech in his head, I thought about this the nights I was working on my speech, I thought of Jacqueline Kennedy and I thought of my wife who sometimes came into my studio as I was screaming the words, to support development!, as I got more and more nauseous and I would feel a pulse in the left part of the head, and if I touched it I would feel a bloating vein and then I would scream to support development!, hoping to make the swelling go down, that screaming at the top of my lungs would make it go down. And so I would ask my wife to stay away from me and get out of the room where I was recording myself – leave me alone, leave me alone! – as I feared that my head might blow out, that it could blow out like Kennedy’s. And my wife would wear a pink night-gown, as pink as Jacqueline’s dress that day in Dallas, and I would think of my wife as Jacqueline in her pink dress, my wife as Jacqueline all covered with brain, with brain on her face and her pink night-gown, my wife as Jacqueline crawling and shouting, and I could hear her scream resounding in her head, something no one else could hear.