TRIESTE It is entitled “Transcend and go up” and it is the monologue that will bring back to Trieste, for a single repetition, Alessandro Bergonzoni Saturday evening, at 8.30 pm at the Orazio Bobbio Theater.
Comedian, cabaret artist, playwright, writer, humorist, actor and lyricist, Bergonzoni does not conceal a certain joy at the idea of preparing for a stage in Trieste on his tour. How come?
«Because my first girlfriend was from Trieste, because when I arrived by train for the first time I exclaimed: “In Trieste there is the sea!”. Because I like her Central European atmosphere and the sea she keeps inside her and because she reminds me of Marco Cavallo and Franco Basaglia and there is a statue of Joyce ».
How did the idea for this monologue come about?
«First of all, it was born in unsuspecting times as if to presage a bit like a vision, which the artist must have: I felt that we could no longer be astonished or startled but we had to transcend. We are linked to information, to everyday life, to facts, to everything that social networks and politicians’ tweets impose on us, I ask, I asked and I invoke a change of dimension in order to be able to change direction. Now more than ever there is a need to look down, to get up higher, to climb because we are in a really deep hole. We only talk about spirituality when we talk about the church or religion, we don’t do it when we talk about politics or the economy and the damage is evident».
Between feminicides, racism, migrants and much more, will the public be able to find the strength to laugh?
“People laugh a lot every night. Comedy is a surreal and metaphysical ingredient that is part of my poetics. Someone tells me that it’s a wonderful show because you think and laugh: this is offensive to me because it would be like saying “you’re a fantastic person because you talk while you move your mouth”. We do everything “contemporaneaMENTRE”, we do contemporary art, ‘the dance of the while’.
We all do multiple things at the same time and I like the audience to come out destroyed so they can rebuild themselves after a ride of an hour and three quarters where they really played it out and I relate to them. There isn’t a wall between us, there isn’t even when I’m in a class talking about life or when I’m doing it in prisons or hospitals. Woe to pull up that wall».
In his works he makes admirable use of the Italian language without ever creating a detachment or lowering the level too much. How you do it?
«The key word is “amazement” like the pores of the skin. We have a skin that defends us from the rest of the planet, divides us. To use the Italian language you have to break down this border and let yourself be penetrated, inhabited and inhabited. At that point the research of years and years leads you not to just use the language, but the thought that underlies the Italian language».
You often hear yourself called “juggler of the word”…
«I hope to be a juggler of thought, without which the word has no soul, no life. That affection that causes language to change and be inclusive does not pass, especially today in which the words “inclusion” or “other” are pilloried because we all want to defend ourselves or attack and we do not remember the third phase which is that of welcoming. You have to get out of the canons of language and use fantasy, imagination and vision, without which an artist does not exist. We begin to understand what words tell us. They ask us for a metamorphosis. Words already tell us everything. Then there is the personal commitment of the artists, which is not a duty but for me it is. If I don’t take to the streets, if I don’t demonstrate, if I don’t write, if I don’t denounce, if I don’t participate, if I don’t go to prisons, to former psychiatric hospitals and I don’t move around touching certain realities first hand, I don’t feel like a work ».
Writing, collaboration with magazines, radio, television, are all activities that guarantee freedom of expression. But how did she embed his words into the songs?
«These are all arts, except for television where I go less and less. I love the radio, newspapers and schools. But I also love songs, Piero Pelù’s “Bomba Boomerang” comes from my belief that all the bombs people sent came back. The one for Gaetano Curreri was more intimate. I made cameos for the cinema for Benigni’s Pinocchio or for Mimmo Paladino’s Quijote. I wish I could still write a book of poetry, but all this is part of the same art».
You won the National Culture of Peace Award in a year in which we are witnessing images of war on a daily basis.
«I dedicated it to the invisible in prisons and to the dead at sea. They are the ones who deserve the peace prize. I fail to understand why people have this ancestral need to wage war. For economic reasons, of course, and for the supremacy of the strongest. The other day, a doubt that there had been a Russian bomb on a Polish border was enough to trigger two Italian politicians who tweeted a new declaration of war. Then you can understand why I was happy to be at a meeting with students, in the midst of art at that time. How can I not get used to war images? I must first rebel and learn from myself. Finding peace and distributing it, telling it wherever it goes, even in theatres”.