ON GAZA ON THE STREETS OF DESIRE 
ON THE STREETS OF DESIRE of Fabio Tolledi
theater Astragali
March 18, 2010
When a company theater is part ... unusual for a theater company to load and go. Tour companies are called, is the time from ordinary extraordinary adventure of making theater.
but this time is different, definitely different.
in recent years we have known the places that have profoundly changed, which have opened up our horizons and changed the center of gravity of our world.
in the '80s, when I started doing theater, I started studying theater in what was our university, on the third theater, anthropology theater here that had a reference point taught us that this was a place Salento of the lost ...
origins of the theater, a place from which to pass, that you could not cross the passage, in a little place to go to find those tracks between East and West, endless suburbs or trapdoor of history (to say it again with Bodini), Our Lady of the Turks was a lady of the migrant (Good) or Corpus Christi hidden by purple cloth (Barba). Here, the scene of the late last century it was the memory of hurt and betrayed in the migrant himself, the wound in his body marks the abandonment of their land, not a sign of strength.
Since the mid-90s, we have realized that the meridian thinking requires us to think from ourselves, from our concrete circumstances of a specific land and violated. And we have made this place Salento manifold of a possible theater. It is the Mediterranean, this land.
and then we started shooting peer into the earth crust sister. Greece first. Not ancient Greece, but Greece contemporary and classical at the same time, the time shared their time and the theater here. Among these wandering MINNIE Industry the show gives us, between these major events that dry up the land among the musicians devoured by the star system that makes everything equal and consumption, a DE-MARTINI Salento this to drink, that point of trying to find a sense of theater, a sense of community impossible, unspeakable, impractical?
What sense then, still, today, starting from there, with its own theater?
"Get to a theater" in Fate urged the Antonio Verri sheets of poetry. And then to Greece, real or no clothes, we added Vestal Albania, Kosovo, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, France, Morocco, Spain. and wherever we could find people asking, what questions the theater than they ever could have found in a television, cinema, in a home party, even in a university.
Because what happens in a living theater is an encounter between women and men. Because what happens in a theater is life.
This strange path leads us today to meet with Palestine. the land where Jesus Christ is the place where an absolute injustice takes place more than sixty years.
a place where the good conscience of Europe has paid his debt to the Holocaust. Does it seem strange the word Holocaust in Arabic is called al-Nakba: the catastrophe. The term itself indicates the plan of the Nazi genocide and the loss of land and the project of genocide in the land holy.
thousands of refugees, thousands of deaths.
And we with our theater, we're going to tell our stories there. There, where the story suffers. The Mediterranean where there is bleeding. There, where the poor Christ sacrificed himself. Where the poor bastards in Gaza, living in inhuman conditions, after a military aggression that has massacred hundreds of men and women and children. There, where a wall of 480 km was built, after the Berlin wall, the wall of Berlin, against the false consciousness of the democratic West, of our dear near-west.
and brought them lost. after submitting the sea CPT Regina Pacis of San Foca, after having done so close to the wall dividing Nicosia between Greek and Turkish part, we will talk with unintelligible words, in the words of Jean Genet which speaks of Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, where miles of women, children and elderly were massacred. Genet words and told us of the beauty, strength of beauty, heart beat and manages to capture the beauty even in the destruction. Pretty as a Palestinian girl who laughs. This is the journey of a small theater, traveling alone. A small theater that as it says Testori, scarrozzanti us, continually discovers that the function of theater is at the root dell'indicibilità
****
March 27, 2010 The passage of Amman,
I wonder what Walter Benjamin would have thought crossing the streets and alleys that make up the souk in Amman.
The Arcades Project are those made of glass and iron buildings that combine two streets full of shops and shop windows, galleries are our towns, are perhaps the prototype of the squares of the fake hypermarket. In
Benjamin is also a metaphor for Paris, capital of the nineteenth century, of modernity. Glass and steel as a metaphor for the transparency and strength. Place dell'apoteosi of merchandise and advertising.
Here, the souk in Amman is the exact opposite of the Parisian arcades: concrete instead of glass and iron, are joined by narrow passages where tailors and barbers, infinite market, some of the goods which is passed from hand to hand without need the consent of the original owner, shops selling musical instruments and birds together, perhaps in homage to the famous song by virtue of the beautiful birds, sellers of sugar cane juice, and then the vegetable market, with the triumph of the brotherhood cuperta patch, and as in our festivals sellers chickens, ducks, chickens, rabbits all strictly live. How to live under your eyes is the cut of meat. And then, just-picked herbs and spices: chamomile green, all sorts of dried fruit, essences that give off scent alive, strong, perishable. And in this it seems clear that we move from the vivid moments of life, poor and difficult to know the weight of the smallest coin to the expense of compulsive buy 3 and pay 2, credit cards, of long-life of the consumable. These are places, not very decent, very clean, very honest, but places. In view of the infinitely non-places of the same chain stores.
We have come to the souk in Amman for us to be enchanted by life, by the cries of the vendors. Without the exotic, if possible. Without Orientalism, if we are capable.
Kuššu 'ala al ma'rad the' bi ASRA dinar: come and see, 10 for 1 dinar.
And then on the square in front of the mosque bodiniani unemployed in the sun, with tools, ready to be called to day. There was a time when a girl gave me for my birthday a box of passatiempi. That intervention called it art conceptual. And here among the sellers of lupines, the one that will put you in the head as a child to make towards the moon, I find my time, my old laziness, my thirst for life. The life of refugees, the endless fields here in Amman where there are 1 million refugees fled the war in Iraq, so that celebrate the importance of democracy here in Jordan where 60% of the population is Palestinian, here where the Mediterranean coagulates and shows all its contradictions, beauty and heartbreak of the story.
******************
April 3, 2010 I speak.
speak. Every day I speak.
tests the morning of Persae that we bring to the Festival Ramallah, on Friday, the three workshops from 2 to 8 with women, university students in Nablus, with men and boys in this country, Sebastia.
And I speak.
I'm talking about theater.
And all these people (several hundred) tell me their life, their hopes, with their despair. And I
, dumb, I mean.
Omar, University of Nablus, twenty-two years. We went every year, at least once, to the Great Temple Mount in Jerusalem. At Al Aqsa every year I went there my brothers and my cousins \u200b\u200bplay and run along the great walls in front of the mosque. I have one year left half-shekel was the coin that gave us our father on holidays. And with my brother we have tried a crack into the great wall, leaving the coin. It was a strange gesture, done in secret, 'cause that little money was the only thing we could give our father, who worked there was little, and money were all sweaty. However, we found the correct slot to leave the coin. Ten years have passed since then. We could not go back to Al Aqsa flies. And that 's my secret. And that's just my now, because my brother and 'was killed by Israeli soldiers. And only I can now return to the coin return, our half-shekel.
I speak.
Every day I speak of the theater.
The importance of saying and to not remain silent. But
I mute speak.
And I know my childhood.
of my childhood world. I remember the poor
walls of Lecce in the summer. Or the endless suburbs of Milan. The courtyard and ringhera.
It smells, and colors.
I see children, grand children, playing in the street. Car tires. Animals. Earth and sand on which to roll continuously. One wonders how it is possible at this moment this terrible wound in the history of our common sea.
just look at the concrete and sloping red roofs of Jewish settlements. perfect spaces, clean and neat as a bank. Exactly, like a bank
speak and I wonder what is the space of desire. a society 'and lay open, intelligent and curious, which thrust is in the absolute lack of justice and hope. a company that folds in the drift devotional. classes in the schools of this small country are mixed. to us asking us to work separately. Increasingly
.
We are working in Samaria. Jesus 'parable of the Good Samaritan who tries to explain and' next to that if you have love.
"A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. By chance a priest was going down that road and when he saw him he passed away. Likewise a Levite, came to the place and saw him, passed on. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, next saw him and had compassion.
He went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine, and then, on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them, saying: Take care of him and what more you spend I will repay you on my return. "
Ahmad is a Palestinian boy with whom we worked three years ago in Jordan. This year we have worked with him in Amman, is a fine actor with many prospects ahead for this hard job. The Ramallah festival managed to get an entry permit for a week, for our show with him. And last night he arrived in Palestine. Ahmad, a Palestinian boy, he sees today, for the first time, the land at dawn.
is a strong boy, enormous. National Geographic is doing the role of Jesus in a docu-fiction and we can say that Ahmad, a young Palestinian actor, embodies the most famous Palestinian history (the West).
Here at Sebaste, an ancient Roman theater, the city was named Augusta, and perhaps spoke for Italo Calvino clear descendant of the rule of the emperors. A school group of girls all visits to Roman ruins, from the hills check some Israeli tank, protect new settlements, which expands. The girls evidently accustomed to terror 'ordinary' lower their eyes.
The settlements, obsessively, remind me of the movies.
Western, you know, means West. A
evidence that perhaps you do not remember enough.
come cranes, bulldozers and armored cars from war. They take a hill overlooking the surrounding valley. If there is a village of eight hundred - a thousand people are being evacuated and confiscated. The houses built were donated to waves of immigrants who come from all over the world. I wonder if this is conceivable if it happened in Brianza. The settlements are inhuman abuse, I met dozens of men and women who have brought stories, dreams, songs. And all of them a history of expulsion, of mourning, of violence for 60 years. It is difficult, it's damn hard to talk about peace in these places.
And my theater tries to do this. And I try
words Capitini, back, Rossi Doria, Danilo Dolci. And I wonder how it is possible no peace without justice. And I wonder how it is possible the theater without a profound sense of humanity and do. Adorno
wondered how it was possible to write poetry after Auschwitz, after Hiroshima and, in elementary school taught me the poetry of Umberto Saba said, "and how could we sing with the enemy foot on his chest?" And Brecht - what we used Ali, our first show of sixteen years ago - that was asked "As these times have become, if talk of trees seems almost a crime."
Well, I do not understand how to make poetry, yet, with this profound injustice that continues and that can only produce disaster and despair.
yet.
Yet perhaps this desperation, women and men can still find a last scrap of humanity.
I speak, I speak of Gilgamesh and how his story to others, his story, makes it immortal.
Everything is summed up in a miraculous wait for word, a child nearly unraveling of glances, a silence that asks, insatiable and constantly asks, come back? You will go back again?
Of course, we would like.
The cross always those borders.
************************************* April 10, 2010 Jerusalem, the holy city
Jerusalem. The Holy City. Or rather, the sacred city. Why this place manifold preserves something absolutely obscene. Something absolutely profane. Uncontested reign of religious tourism. Blasphemous form of contemporary life. What is striking in a very human perspective and lay the burden of violence is that this place combines in itself.
military presence communicates with the presence of God and of the three monotheistic religions that have in place the fate of this coexistence, the plot. Plot that plot in the darkness of violence. I certainly did not invent the link between violence and the sacred, between violence and god. The jew
Benjamin in a famous essay about youth violence in
For a critique of the triple value of the German word Gewalt, and how the level of violence in connection with a mythical foundation (Niobe, struck with pride in his killing of his seven sons and his seven daughters)
the legend of Niobe can oppose violence as an example of the divine court of God on the band of Korah [cf. No. 16, 1-35]. Those affected are the privileged, the Levites. They strike without warning, without threat. The Judgement of God and not stop before hitting of mass destruction. But the destruction is purifying. For Walter Benjamin to recognize there is a deep connection between on the one hand, the non-bloody violence and divine purification, on the other. In fact, the blood is the symbol of pure [Blosse] fact of life.
Violence in the sacred place par excellence.
It is as if you unleashed the concrete floor of the sacred symbols, in all its constitutive violence.
The Holy Sepulchre contains the plurality of different professions Christian. And in the same spot overlapping symbol symbol, a relic to relic. Place which is said to have seen the crucifixion, the anointing, burial and resurrection of Jesus
Theatre constant clashes between the different Christian traditions, where no one can move the minimum object.
The keys to this holy place have, for decades, kept by an Arab family, the al-
Ghudayya that opens the Holy Sepulchre in the morning, then close at 6 pm.
We can say that the Arab family has made an agreement all the contestants Christians for nearly a century and a half.
The schedule of the Holy Sepulchre is located more than fifty years a wooden staircase. It is now cordoned off. No one can afford to get close and get it off without triggering the revolt of the faithful. One name and a different symbolic fabric, ready to explode. We
to approach the Al Aqsa Mosque. Israeli soldiers armed prevent us from entering. On Friday and Saturday you can not enter. On other days, for several weeks, if you have less than fifty years and you are not Arab, you can still enter.
is the place from which Muhammad made his mystical journey. The prophecy of the scale ...
Many scholars know that this vision of Muhammad influenced Dante and his Divine Comedy.
Come to the Wailing Wall. Metal detector. All very clean technology. All very orderly and composed. It's Saturday. You can not take shots with the camera. Smoking is not allowed.
Every jew is said to come here at least once. At the foot of the temple. The holy sanctorum. The stairway to heaven and god.
This god, in Jerusalem, is not unique.
It is hard to find in the thousands of crosses of all sizes, in the dove with olive branch saying shalom in gunpoint in human slaughter in the place of separation from humanity.
slaughterhouse. This is the feeling lighter. Slaughterhouse absurdity of rejecting violence, thousands of women and men. You can not be happy, in an infinite concentration camp. You can not be happy to think that the most sacred places of such humanity are violated by the blind violence of armies. The wall. The wall. The wall. The wall. Six hundred miles of a wall eight meters high. To Berlin was 155 km to a height of three meters. Exercises of the dear old West. Current forms of apartheid. Adorno was wondering how it was possible to sing after Auschwitz and Hiroshima. And all my training related to Jewish culture (Benjamin, Jabès, Derrida), have used the experience of the great poet Ytzach Katzenelson for my first show with Astragali. This bleeds. This is the deep wound of our sea. And there is no peace where a genocide takes place. Many wondered how it was possible not to notice what was happening in the camps. Us today, little women and little men in a small provincial theater, we wonder how we can remain silent in this absolute crime that destroys the lives of thousands of people. Jerusalem. Place where even the poor man bleeds. Place where religion does not justify any kind of injustice, no type of violence. And we scarrozzanti to ask again where we can make our show. Where is the theater where we have to work
fabio Tolledi
