Laura Sicignano: “At the Catania building, a billboard to ‘escape’ from Covid”

‘Escapes’: why? “Because it is the state of mind that we want to express after the forced enclosure due to the Covid pandemic, to return to the pure pleasure of the personal encounter and the collective ritual represented by the live show”. Thus Laura Sicignano, artistic director of the Stabile theater in Catania, explains to AdnKronos the meaning of the title-slogan, ‘Shows – Evasions’, chosen for the summer program, with five productions ‘by the Verga theater’ for the post-coronavirus recovery. “Not in the sense of an escape theater – he is keen to specify on the immediate eve of the national ‘premiere’ for Franco Scaldati’s Sicilian ‘Pinocchio’ in the courtyard of Platamone, the cultural palace of the Etna capital – if anything, popular in the noblest sense of term and dedicated to all the theatrical audience understood in the broadest sense “. Sicignano underlines “Finally, we return to acting in front of the eyes of the public and not the eye of the camera. It is a moment that is not at all risky to define liberating: ‘escapes’, in fact”. Escapes that have a direct red thread with Sicily that unites all the shows, those already proposed at the Verga theater in Catania as ‘A cirimonia’ by Rosario Palazzolo co-produced with the Biondo theater in Palermo which won the national theater criticism award; ‘The last of the Alagones’ by Nino Martoglio, contamination between the actor’s theater and the traditional puppet opera; and ‘The new colony’ by Luigi Pirandello c andidata in the triad of the ‘Masks’ for the best direction. And that continues for hours with Franco Scaldati’s ‘Pinocchio’, to then close with ‘La pacchiona’, the Sicilian version of Neil LaBute’s ‘Fat Pig’, shining the spotlight on the very special Sicilian ‘Pinocchio’ which debuts this evening at the palace of culture Catania, “is a novel, born not as a theatrical work, which is also a bit of a journey into the universe of Scaldati – explains the artistic director of the Stabile di Catania – in her language, a very sharp Palermo dialect, and in her recurring figures, thanks to a very accurate work on her literary work done by the director Livia Gionfrida, through this childhood myth that all Italians have in their DNA, from the Collodi novel to the Walt Disney cartoon, from the television Pinocchio to the cinema ones: it will be a really interesting ‘short circuit’ between myth and literature, history and legend, reality and fantasy “. A billboard that” speaks a lot of Sicilian, but proposes a Sicily that we try to serve with a contemporary look, from directors to actors, with an important space reserved for emerging young people – says Laura Sicignano – looking for rare texts, from the less represented Pirandello to the little known Martoglio compared to works such as ‘L’aria del Continente’ , up to the unpublished ‘Pinocchio’ by Scaldati “. A Sicily” less frequented and less obvious, to which the public has so far responded very well: after all, the Catanese is by nature very lively, curious, attentive and also loves theater. , it’s a really competent audience “. The re-enactments of the great Etnean actor Turi Ferro will also continue, with an exhibition that will be visible throughout the summer, now outdoors and from autumn at the Verga theater. A theater that “has emerged from a critical situation, due to debt , but which now – assures the artistic director Laura Sicignano – has got back on its feet “. A theater that next year will also offer its most representative shows on tour, from Milan to Genoa, from Trieste to Verona. (by the correspondent Enzo Bonaiuto)