** Theater: Calbi (Inda), ‘Mattarella in Syracuse testifies to the centrality of culture for Italy’ **

“The President of the Republic comes to remind us that culture is at the center of Italy, of which it is the essential heritage to be protected, valued and handed down: I want to interpret his presence as an underlining of what our Constitution says in article 9, or that the Republic promotes development and scientific and technical research; protects the landscape and the historical and artistic heritage of the Nation. President Mattarella arrives in a place, the Greek theater of Syracuse, where Aeschylus and also Plato sat from Greece he came to dialogue with the tyrants of the time to contribute to a more just dimension of power “. This is what Antonio Calbi, superintendent of the Inda foundation, the National Institute of Ancient Drama, underlines to AdnKronos, which organizes the cycle of classical shows at the Greek Theater of Syracuse, where the Head of State is expected on July 19. “The theater is the mirror of the ‘polis’, today as it was two millennia ago. Not by chance – recalls Calbi – the great philosopher Jacques Derrida in withdrawing his honorary citizenship spoke of the ‘temptations of Syracuse’ with a lectio magistralis at Palazzo Vermexio, built on an old temple like the Duomo, regarding the contribution of intellectuals to the design of the ‘ideal city’ … In this sense, Syracuse is as important as Athens and as much as Rome and I would say no other city, linked to culture and art, to science and history, with a very close relationship between the city and its theater “. This season, which now sees alternating between Euripides’ ‘Bacchae’ and ‘Coefore-Eumenidi’ by Aeschylus, and then continues with ‘Le Nuvole’ by Aristophanes , “also wants to be a hope that the theater returns to represent the place of the ‘democracy of the arts’ and the presence of the President of the Republic and a person like Sergio Mattarella, witness of a sobriety of politics and the institutional world , an exceptional spectator but at the same time sitting next to the other spectators-citizens, underlines the importance of culture as a primary asset of society, multiplying its symbolic value “. Calbi anticipates that” a ‘twinning’ is being worked on between the two theaters most important Greeks in the world and therefore of Syracuse with Epidaurus in Greece “. Meanwhile, “the public is responding very well to this season in some ways exceptional, starting with the move from May to July of its inception, forced by the Covid pandemic which also involves a contraction of the public admitted in the stalls. Even if the schools are closed and therefore we cannot accept the traditional school trips, we still register a good percentage of young people, while the Sicilian students who have taken the maturity this year will be able to have an entrance at a very reduced price, as a prize and a recognition towards them from part of Syracuse. A sign consistent with the attention that our Inda Academy places towards the artistic training of young people. “The shows – now ‘Baccanti’ and ‘Coefore-Eumenidi’, then ‘Nuvole’ – mark” a season based on artistic and stylistic diversity: an element that testifies that there is no single way to deal with the classics, which represent the oc casione to experiment without betraying the texts of the great playwrights of the time. These are shows that we could define as ‘visionary’, original and at the same time original, to certify that theater is a live creation, right at the moment when sociality has been suspended, frozen, stolen. In the era of the invasion of the digital image that chases us in every moment of our life, seeing spectacular images with an artisanal flavor is really important, I would say fundamental, because – explains Antonio Calbi – they are images that we ourselves are called to complete with our emotions “. (by the correspondent Enzo Bonaiuto)