Giancarlo Sepe's new show "Bazin," debuting tomorrow evening, will inaugurate the 50th season of Teatro la Comunità, the only Roman neo-avant-garde theater of the 70s still operating. Indeed, it has become a landmark in the Roman theater scene, even before this tragic year, with so many theaters closed.
“ When in 1972 I entered the spaces under the stairs in via Gigi Zanazzo, which was a paper warehouse of the State Mint – Sepe recalls – I was 26 years old, with several shows under my belt by authors ranging from Kafka to Lorca, from Sartre to Beckett, plus two years earlier those 'Mysteries of Love' by Vitrac which had attracted the attention of the most important critics ”.
To inaugurate the new space he chose "Ubu Roi" by Jarry, which was a success. Other shows followed, starting with the wonderful and musical "Scarrafonata" which then toured all over Italy, and then the acclaimed "In albis", which was invited to the Spoleto Festival where "Accademia Akermann" also debuted, now historic titles that gave Sepe (and his theater) solid notoriety.
On this basis, in collaboration with its great set designer of those years, Uberto Bertacca, in 78 the space was definitively restructured with a choice that privileged the needs of the show with a 20-meter deep stage and a staircase for the audience of less than 10.
" Now I'm obviously 76 years old, and the La Comunità theater still exists, because I dreamed it, conceived it, and built it, with great sacrifice. From a bare, dark, and damp underground space, I turned it into a real theater, with a stage, dressing rooms, an audience, and a small office ."
Almost a third of the 106 shows signed in a lifetime by Sepe were born at the Community, while he became the director of Lilla Brignone and Umberto Orsini, who opened the doors of the great Italian theaters for him. Among other things, he created memorable works for Mariangela Melato, with whom he collaborated for six years, five years with Monica Guerritore and 20 years with Aroldo Tieri and Giuliana Lojodice, but he also signed a memorable "Conversations with the mother" for Beppe and Concetta Barra.
And in the meantime he carried out more experimental and visionary work, theatrical but as always with a particular eye for cinema and an ear for music, in that place where – he says passionately – “ before there were only mice and today many young people have grown up there with the desire to do theater ”, participating in Sepe's creations which, just to name a few, range from ”Macbeth” to ”Act Without Words”, from ”Oscar Wilde's Fables”, repeated at the Community for four years, to ”The Dubliners”, from ”Werther on Broadway” to ”Hamlet”.
Along these lines, “Bazin” was born, in co-production between La Comunità, Teatro Diana of Naples and Teatro della Toscana. André Bazin was the creator of “Cahiers du cinema” and supported young critics, making them directors, creating the French new wave and dying in 1958 at the age of 40, while his favorite student, Truffaut, was starting to shoot “The 400 Blows” that he would never see.
“ The sad fate of an unfortunate man, unloved for his rigidity and his prickly character, which is why he fascinated me ,” says Sepe, remembering him as suspicious of the editing work and in favor of the sequence shot, a theoretician of what Ronoir achieved with “The Rules of the Game”.
A Catholic and a communist, he had a particular faith in documentary cinema, in popular testimony, but as an intellectual he always asked himself: " Are we sure that what we see is reality? ".
Sepe started from this question and built an absolutely fantastic, visionary and invented Bazin story, set on the night he dies. In the role of the French critic is Pino Tufillario and with him, among others, Margherita Di Rauso, David Gallarello and Fedrica Stefanelli. It will be repeated until June 12.
A premiere that is also a celebration for these 50 years, which we will then find a way to remember and celebrate specifically, and in which all those who have been members of the Community will be present in spirit, which as a cultural association had to and must register spectators.
It ranges from Eduardo De Filippo to Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli, Alberto Moravia, Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Lionello, Maurice Bejart, Giulietta Masina, Romolo Valli, Giorgio De Lullo, Paolo Stoppa, Lilla Brignone, Patroni Griffi and many other names from all over Italian culture.
The same people who testified in 1978, when the police attempted to close down La Comunità, in favor of this place, " for its value and importance as an anomalous and fundamental space, because it bears witness to the freedom of theatrical inspiration not subject to box-office constraints ", as Giancarlo Sepe proudly recalls today.
