Written by: Bogdan Dumitrescu, Translation: Alexandra Coroi
Excessive, striking, poetic, harsh, spiritual, playful, intense, ritualistic, confessional—these are just some of the words that describe the atmosphere and sensations experienced during a Pippo Delbono performance. In 2017, I barely managed to enter the overly crowded, almost suffocating space of Fabrica de Cultură, where I had a sort of revelation. Moreover, this revelation seemed to be a collective one, shared by everyone present. I was completely astonished by the anarchic, eclectic, yet lyrical and beautiful way in which such a powerful contact with the real can occur, and to this day, it remains one of the most significant artistic experiences I’ve had.
After Vangelo, came La Gioia and Amore. Between these last two performances, during the pandemic, Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione made available online recordings of Delbono’s older shows, allowing me to watch Orchidee, Dopo la battaglia, and Questo buio feroce.
This year, Pippo Delbono returns to the Sibiu International Theatre Festival with Il risveglio (The Awakening), a world premiere, continuing the spiritual journey of the character who falls asleep under the withered tree at the end of Amore. On the occasion of his return to Sibiu, I had the chance to ask him a few questions about the things that inspire him and about his artistic vision in an increasingly uncertain present.
Bogdan Dumitrescu: Vangelo was your first play that I saw a few years ago, right here in Sibiu at the International Theater Festival. Soon after it started, I became aware of the fact that I didn’t fully understand what exactly was I witnessing. It did not seem like theatre, as nobody appeared to act, and I could not think about it as a show, because in no way was I able to associate it with entertainment. In the end, after going through a rollercoaster of emotions and thoughts, from agony to awe and back, I started thinking that this was more like an event, a profound intensification of life. I’m sure you’ve heard many similar experiences from spectators throughout the years, and I’m very interested to know how you would define your work?
Pippo Delbono: It is very difficult to define my work. I am like a child, I am not aware of my performances, not even of their beauty, their humor, and their dramatic intensity. After all, I believe that a true artist never knows. Pina Bausch, who was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, used to say: “I don’t know”. I have a special ear for music. For dance, for poetry. For words.
Your shows mix poetry, music, dancing, films, rituals and symbols. The cultural references range from the liturgical to pop-culture, and the narratives from fiction to real life events. Yet, in all this, there’s a sense of autobiography and of deep intimate feelings that seem impossible to separate from the rest. At times, watching your work is like living intensely with an emotion that grows and grows until it bursts and spreads throughout the public, almost wrapping us in a fine layer of reality that provides a sense of collectivity, even complicity. What inspires you to create these experiences? How does the show develop to the final performance we get to see?
Pippo Delbono: For many years, the creative process of my performances developed through the actors’ improvisations. Perhaps I was influenced by the work I had done with Pina Bausch when I worked in her Company, where we did a lot of improvisations. Then, for a few years I started working less with improvisations and directly with poetry together with the actors of my Company, also starting from ideas that came out from of my head, creating a lot of emotional situations. The plays swung from irony to pain, from music to dance. Perhaps the audience did not completely understand the performances, but was totally involved in it.
Le Monde’s greatest French critic, Colette Godard, – who had seen my last show, Amore, and was shocked by it (I think she had seen all my shows) – said to me in Paris: “I don’t understand why when I’m watching your works, I start crying at a certain point…”. And another great Italian critic wrote: “Pippo Delbono knows very well how to take the audience on a journey through all the emotions, irony, sadness, love, pain, loneliness. And the audience, without understanding it, they follow him.”
Politics is very present in your work on multiple levels. Some of the stories deal with both historical and contemporary tragedies, like the troubled history of the 20th century or the refugee crisis. Many symbols, both sacred and vulgar, are used in a critical manner, by exposing their rigidity to reveal new meanings. The shows provide a platform that offers a voice to individuals who might not have a voice in society, and the overall style seems truly anarchic at times, suggesting the raw beauty and freedom of the struggles of life. How do you link art with politics, and do you consider that art has a responsibility to facilitate change, be it spiritual or political?
Pippo Delbono: Yes. All the truths in a performance become political. They become spirituality. I have been practicing Buddhism for 35 years. It’s a form of Buddhism that is not based on the best-known Buddhism, which comes from India, but a secular Buddhism that developed in Japan. A secular Buddhism that says all people possess the “Buddhahood”, the Buddha condition, and there is an enlightened part inside everybody.
It has nothing to do with whether they are men or women, good people or bad people, all are Buddhas. There is a phrase that we repeat as mantra, which is: “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo”, and it means so many things, for example: I conform to the Law of Cause and Effect. Buddhism is a great struggle. I struggled against everything thanks to Buddhism: serious illnesses, worst illnesses of the head, and also against a Buddhism that has become formal, no longer true. Spirituality can be important in theatre. Only it must be a true spirituality. Without dogma, double pretenses, without non-truth.
In performances so full of images and sensory experiences, it is the word and voice (spoken or shouted) that maintain a central role. Poetry, monologues, memories or songs are used to guide us through our journey. In many moments in your work, the brute force of a voice is revealed to have some sort of mystical power, long forgotten by us but somehow familiar. Moreover, the languages used are varied and might not be understood by the viewers, and even though subtitles exist, it’s amazing how the poetry seems to transcend language barriers by being felt with the body more than with the mind. How can words be so powerful today? Where does the power of this voice reside?
Pippo Delbono: What a difficult question. You have already answered it, what can I add? You should formulate the answer (smiling, ed.). But I’ll try to say something. One day in Malaga (Spain) I went to the Picasso Museum. I clearly appreciated Picasso. But I had never really felt his soul. When I visited this museum in Malaga, I saw his soul. The exhibition began with a painting of a beautiful woman’s face. I think she was one of his girlfriends.
Then, in the other museum halls I admired a lot of portraits of the same woman, her face deformed in so many ways. It was extraordinary. So I definitely felt in love with Picasso. Everyone says I am a little crazy. Like Picasso… My theatre, I think, is very cubist. As my brain is. Sweet, hard, spoken, shouted, whispered, danced. And musical.
In an old interview of yours, I read you have mentioned that one of the things theatre must do is to provoke and reawaken us. In light of your new show, Il risveglio (Awakening), can you expand on this idea and tell us what do you think we need to be reawakened from? Also, is this concept more related to us as individuals or as a collective? And what is art’s role in this?
Pippo Delbono: Wars, massacres, death rule in the world we inhabit, but somehow we became addicted to all this mess. Even the Covid has been forgotten although it caused so many deaths as everybody has seen on TV. The deaths were wrapped in nylon, and the sick people could not be approached by anyone as in a terrible and ancient plague. Now nobody wants to talk about it anymore, I suppose it’s a defense mechanism. Historically, the dramatic experiences like wars, pest and death turned into great growth for the people who survived. But this is not happening now. This is a time when there is no truth. Now we are afraid of the truth.
Credit photo: Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione
