class="">Fabio Tolledi: „It’s very important that theatre people describe the conflicts of our world.“

October 26^th 2015

Fabio Tolledi, director, playwright, artistic director of the Astragali Theatre in Lecce, Italy and president of ITI Italy (International Theatre Institute),  has been invited to the NTF to participate to the debate ”War. Conflict. Theatre” centered around the question ”Can theatre bring back harmony among people?”.  The debate, due on Monday, October 26^th, at 11:30 at ARCUB Gabroveni Coffeeshop, tries to analyze how and if theatre can reduce the manifestations of different forms of violence within the contemporary society.

An interview by Cristina Enescu

What are theatre and war to say to each other?

There are strong connections between the two of them, there have been strong connections between the two of them from the very beginning. Aspects of war are present in many of the antique tragedies. Today it’s so very important for people working in theatre to find ways to describe and to find novel perspectives about the conflicts in our world.

Can theatre act as a mirror of war?

Not only as a mirror. Theatre efficiently transforms society. We transform society through theatre, in many different ways. We can distinguish two aspects here: an internal one, and that is the mission of theatre in finding the words, the means of expression to describe conflict. We also have the perspective of the condition of theatre men and women living in conflict areas.

We did work in parts of the world where there is war now, we’ve been there in the “intermissions”, in Irak, in Kurdistan. We found many theatre people who wanted to continue to make theatre in order to find new opportunities to describe the world they lived in. Today, we have this acute problematic of the refugees, there are theatre people among them, writers, artists. We ask ourselves what is their condition…

There is another aspect of this problematic: censorship, going hand in hand with conflict situations. Brecht was a refugee, Meyerhold was imprisoned, Garcia Lorca was killed by fascists, all because of their theatre activity. Actor, director and screenwriter Juliano Mer-Khamis, founder of the The Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine, was killed two years ago. He was the son of a Palestinian mother and an Israeli father, both connected to theatre. So, theatre is always considered to be marginal to society, still it’s efficient within society. Today we have so many forms of theatre, associated to entertainment, show business; in these forms, theatre becomes a commercial good. But in some situations, like in conflict situations, theatre starts playing an important role again, it helps in retrieving the real sense of existence.

In such situations, does theatre become an ailment for the public?

Not only, it’s also an instrument for transforming reality. It’s very important to find the words, the way to communicate the story of our reality. For example, when we worked in Turkey, it was impossible to tell a Kurdish actor from a Turkish or a Cypriot Greek on stage. There were no visible differences. Or last year, in Nicosia (Cyprus), in the buffer zone there, we had actors from Greece, from the two sides of Cyprus, from Palestine, etc…so, different nationalities. When you are there, on stage, listening to a Turkish actor singing in Greek, that’s a miracle; it becomes clear that these kinds of things, these kinds of encounters are possible.

One of the principal roots of conflicts and wars is the impossibility to recognize the Other. If you come to know the Other, if you start reckoning his qualities, it’s very difficult to continue leading that war against him. But theatre is not only the stage; it’s the entire experience, with actors and audiences together. The coming together of these two elements is what creates Theatre. It’s important to show very clearly that it is possible to be on the same stage with the Other and to tell the same great story together with him.

You also worked with children’s theatre. How does this go together with the theme of theatre in a context of war?

Children can help us find ways to transform situations. If you put children of different nationalities together they will start to interact, to communicate, to understand each other in very short time. We don’t have to reply to reality, to conflict, what we have to do is to transform things we don’t like. And we don’t like the times we live in, they’re extremely violent. Still, they do offer opportunities to transform ourselves- so does the situation of the migrants, right now and so does the situation of women in society. Women have some extraordinary role to play today, they do transform society- in Arab culture, for example.

Theatre has an official dimension, that of self representation of power through theatre, but to me this is of too little interest. On the other hand, there is this need of people to practice this ancient art form, through which meanings of real life, of all people’s lives may be discovered.

I was impressed finding out that during the bombings in Belgrade and Sarajevo theatres continued to activate, that the houses were full, even in times of the bombings. As they were in Baghdad, during the second Golf War. It seems crazy, but at those time, going to the theatre was not a social event, it was extremely important to those who were making or seeing theatre.

And it’s important not to analyze things only from the official perspective of the great theatre productions, but also the smaller ones, community theatre, open space theatre, theatre in schools etc. These also create shared, mutual experiences, they offer the chance of transforming some situations in people’s lives.

Photo credit: Andrei GÎndac

October 26^th 2015