Theatre director Maurizio Scaparro Throughout the history of Italian theatre examples of creative partnerships between director and production designer are not unusual. In the entertainment sphere the collaboration between the director and a team of craftsmen and women is generally subject to the laws of time and stylistic developments imposed by the author. In the case of Roberto Francia, fate would have it that his encounter with a certain Maurizio Scaparro would prove so decisive as to lead to a longstanding creative cycle that has had a major impact on Italian theatre. And it is Scaparro himself who reveals the key moments in this shared work experience and shines a light on the internal workings of their artistic development.

MAURIZIO SCAPARRO meets ROBERTO FRANCIA

by Giorgio Tabanelli Maurizio Scaparro, on what occasion did you meet Roberto Francia and how did you start your long-term working relationship? I met Roberto Francia before he had started with theatre, he was born in Rome and he moved to Venice to enroll in the Ca’ Foscari. What impressed me most was his insane passion for motorcycles, back then he zoomed around crazily on his cycle. Actually, he started with theatre before I did, because at Ca’ Foscari, I met the mythical director of the Teatro Stabili, Fantasio Piccoli, the founder of the Teatro Stabili at Bolzano. I think I met him then while I was working with the Teatro Stabili in Bolzano with Fantasio Piccoli. And from that moment, a relationship of friendship and collaboration grew and naturally, reciprocal esteem. The show that inaugurated your long collaboration was Festa grande d’aprile, realized in 1964. What memories do you have of that first experience with Roberto? Speaking of our artistic collaboration, we were both on our theatre debut, in the sense that I was at my directorial debut and it was the first time he had worked with me, so we didn’t know what would come of it. I wouldn’t say a style, because it‘s not for me to say so, but a recognizable manner of

doing shows, which was mine, for better or worse, and another style of doing set design, which was his, or if you like, by way of subtraction, which is a word I’ll use often in this conversation. On that occasion, we had a script and maybe more than a theatrical script, it was a political statement, with a few scenes and it was about doing a popular dance and we certainly couldn’t continuously change scene, as we passed from the mountains to the sea, from a building to an attic, from one country to another and so we had to proceed piecemeal. These fragments represented the beauty of Roberto’s scenes and it was the real occasion where we got to know one another, also because after all, the first experience with directing, as regards my research, rather laid the foundations for what would be my work as a director. As Luchino Visconti rightly said, there’s a difference between a director and a metteur in scène. So, I always remembered this, I realized at a certain point because the metteur en scène had become a director; it still hadn’t happened yet for me in the Festa grande d’aprile. In 1968, you brought a version in Turkish of Henry IV to Istanbul. The stage design and the costumes in that production were supposed to have some relation with the iconographic values of Pirandello’s text. How did Francia work on that challenge? Anyhow, in that circumstance, Roberto was both set designer and costume designer and in that production we found a key that he followed up on very well. He overturned the convention that one generally has in regard to the text, seeing the characters on the set before seeing them dressed in costume and today there’s still a tendency to dress them in 1920’s costumes. Actually, for today’s public, that’s a further masquerade, while when Pirandello created the production back then, Henry IV’s clothes and those of the various characters were then contemporary and this is very important, because as for what it suggests to the public, it created and still creates a double hypothesis: clothes that were a costume, that would represent the contemporary, and then clothes that were a costume that would be worn by Henry IV. We abolished this type of convention. Roberto Francia’s idea was a suggestion that I accepted, that actually characterized the surroundings with a singular find: he had one of the valets cleaning the palace with a vacuum cleaner and this initial gesture gave the proof of an opening towards today’s reality and so the story of Henry IV was connected with the immediate reality. I remember this detail of the beginning and how the set was designed; the other sets were rather conventional and so there was this manner of conceiving Henry IV which gave this production a certain relevancy. In fact, not by chance, after that it was invited to the Venice Biennial Festival and was considered among the ten most important shows, part of a celebration dedicated to Luigi Pirandello. In 1972, you and Francia worked together on a production of Hamlet. To describe the set, Carlo Terron used this metaphor: “ They stole everything from the castle in Denmark”. Among the few set elements there, you utilized vast metal sheets and low wooden beams. Doesn’t it seem that Francia worked very hard on the criteria of almost totally emptying the stage? I have to say first of all, that I quote that phrase by Terron, as I find it fun and it became a proverbial way of defining set design. Then we became good friends and laughed about it together. Terron is a critic that has always understood and respected me, when reviewing productions. The work of “subtraction” in that production was exemplary and emblematic, there was great pleasure in not seeing superfluous objects on the stage and not for grotesque reasons or for fun or necessity. In the specific case of this scene, which was very beautiful, I’d like to remind you that Roberto Francia (I say this because he doesn’t like to talk about himself) won the second prize at the Quadrennial Festival at Prague, presided over by Svoboda. It was a very beautiful stage design and I understand why Svoboda liked it: the images were of iron sheets corroded by the weather, which moved around and in turn took on the aspect of a castle, of barriers, of open spaces, and from both above and below, the flooring and ceiling were raised and were made of iron, to form a kind of cage. It was our intention to make of this Hamlet a symbolic representation of a sick relationship with power, the civilized and existential anxiety for the lack of a proper and just State: that was the motto for our production. In this sense not only did Roberto feel at ease with this emptiness, but this manner of working gave life

to an important component within Roberto’s work which should be noted. In that period he had started to sculpt, to make wrought iron sculptures, even deriving from his experience of knowing the famous Futurist painter-sculptor, Afro, and he started working in this direction, creating very beautiful sculptures and well-received art shows, like the one at Los Angeles. Roberto Francia also worked on the televised version of Hamlet. The sets consisted of sliding screens, which opened and closed for the characters’ entrances, there was also an inclined platform that was raised in front to create a stage for the actors who were Hamlet’s guests. Was Francia a just as versatile and adaptable set designer in the passage from theatrical stage design to television set design? My memory of those first directorial experiences (and as you know, Hamlet became a cult show, even for young people), is about the incredible enthusiasm we had. I mean the relationship with the set designer, but also with the actors, as the production had made a young actor like Pino Micol very popular, well known and esteemed. The truth is that any contact we had was a primitive cognitive contact, to say initial, so even the experience that we were having in television had this characteristic: it was the first time that we had worked with that medium. As we know, familiarity is born from familiarity, meanwhile knowledge comes from unpredictable circumstances and research. The fragments that you might have seen of the televised Hamlet, still today demonstrate that it’s possible to reach a certain familiarity between theatre and television. The Richard II was your second Shakespearian experience. Roberto Francia worked on the set design and Vittorio Rossi designed the costumes. The stage is dominated by gleaming, gelid iron, quite different from the corroded iron of Hamlet. Angelo Maria Ripellino wrote: “From the three compartments on the upper floor, the throne room occasionally appears, with Richard II in a mantle the color of a prickly pear and with a silver collar: it’s a room with a haughty atmosphere from where, however, his Majesty descends not by a large, elegant staircase, but by a humiliating little spiral staircase. The unreliable perimeter, by Roberto Francia, circumscribes an absolute space, an abstract fenced area, which is at once a palace, an insane asylum and big tower like a zinc coffin: there’s a deceptive balance, where the actors carry the attitudes of knights of armored families. With the jail-like doom that surrounds the scene, well expressing the turbid aspect of the battle for power, well-fitting are the semi –extinguished series of greyish and black tunics with silver borders like the scales of a lizard. The warmest colour is the brown worn by Gaunt, a Gaunt played by Fernando Pannullo, who excels in the pathetic Tirade on England.” What were the decisions taken with the costume designer and set designer to arrive at these choices? While you read this fabulous quote, it felt natural to me to render homage to a style of reviewing which has almost disappeared today and recognize the great merits of the critics of those times: their attention was given to what are the fundamental aspects of the production, which at times are very particular. Today in the hasty reviews that you read, there’s nothing like this to be seen. In the case of this production, Ripellino demonstrated what intensity of interest he had for the value of the set design, and you know that this is by now a very rare case. Generally, they liquidate the set design with just a few words: “Beautiful set” or “Ugly set”, at the most two phrases. In reality, this represents the second time of, well - I don’t want to call it the Iron Age - the second phase, with efforts that today just aren’t repeatable, because of the expense, where Roberto worked on the set of Richard II. It’s a stage design that has a certain fascinating quality and as Ripellino said, that had an essence to it that was difficult and cramped: the passage from power obtained through divine right to the crisis of power itself, lived by Richard II, almost a crisis of folly. His condition was well translated by a stage design, if you wish, that corresponds with Roberto Francia’s own iron age: Hamlet, Riccardo II and his iron sculptures. The set was naturally complicated, it was a heavy set to mount, but it had

a strong pull of fascination that papier-mậché certainly can’t give, so I have good memories of this mobile sculpture. Julius Caesar played in 1978. The experience of working on three Shakespearian texts was fundamental both for you and Roberto Francia. What is the outcome of your Shakespearian artistic experience? Julius Caesar is a show I happily bring to mind. Roberto’s presence as stage designer was a bit limited as it was at the Olimpico of Vicenza, and as you know, the Olimpico of Vicenza doesn’t dictate conditions, but forbids all interventions of any nature, except in genial moments, as for example during the Medea by Corrado Alvaro. In the case of Julius Caesar, we could only count on a few elements and these elements were built in function of the internal areas. They were elements of a set that opened and closed, wooden elements in different spaces. This question of yours reminds me of the relationship that Roberto and I had with the Teatro Olimpico at Vicenza. Maybe the most beautiful thing I want to remember is from back in 1978, when we did Medea with Corrado Alvaro and Irene Papas. In that circumstance, that you couldn’t intervene in any way for the construction of the sets at the Teatro Olimpico, Roberto, in agreement with me, naturally, and in perfect creative symbiosis, covered the entire stage and orchestra pit with earth, so the image that came out was unique and all the earth represented the others, the foreign lands, it was a truly fascinating image and naturally simple, but truly unique. The work on Shakespeare’s texts was fundamental both for you and Roberto Francia. Can you sum up your Shakespearian drama experience? More than being related to set design, the sum of it has a clearly cultural-artistic sense to it. It was so strong for me that I waited a long time before taking on Romeo and Juliet, my last Shakespeare of recent years. And I have to say that the work on Shakespeare was that of being faithful to the spirit of the texts, through freedom of invention and creative interventions that often happened through the process of emptying the scene. And as Shakespeare is really a contemporary author of today, (please excuse me for the absolutely banal quote, Jan Kott’s well-known title), the most beautiful memory that I have of these three Shakespeares of mine is just an attempt, which I believe was partly successful, of managing to bring to realization what Brook said was a dream for us directors: to direct twice a year, a classic with the eyes of today and a contemporary piece with the eyes of a classic. As Shakespeare is a classic, I tried to see it with eyes of today, but it can also be a great modern work and I think we managed to do that well. Your collaborative relationship with Francia was interrupted in 1976 when you presented I menecmi by Plautus and the La difficoltà iniziale by Casaretti with other set designers. What were the reasons? There aren’t any particular reasons. During a long collaborative journey together, it’s clear that even for reasons of wanting to be able to breathe, you pass to collaborating with other set designers and artists. For example, it’s difficult that I work with Roberto Francia on a piece in another country because the single theatres, in general, have a collaborative relationship with a particular set designer. Or it could happen that for a particular production I choose, for example, Luzzati’s figurative work, which is far from the structuralism and simple poetry done by Roberto Francia. They are different worlds. So, in this case, I‘d choose two great set designers, or Roberto Francia or Emanuele Luzzati: I’d choose Luzzati for his certain way of understanding colour that has nothing to do with Roberto. So, they are changes dictated by needs, though my usual, preferred working partner has been and always will be Roberto Francia. In 1977, when you realized the Cyrano De Bergerac, for the stage design, there was memorable collaboration of Svoboda alongside Francia. Where did you get the idea to have two set designers collaborate and what were the creative results?

Heh, I have to say something I’ve probably never said before, and that Roberto has never revealed for shyness. Svoboda had awarded him at the Quadriennial at Prague and it was easy for me to get in contact with him as he was, as you know, a giant in set design and he accepted working on this Cyrano of mine, also clearly to the great joy of Roberto. Actually, Svoboda sent us a sketch that was the absolute opposite of what I hoped for and had thought of, in the sense that it was all a vague memory, though clear enough, a sort of big forest, I’d say. I remember many leaves, many trees which had a certain suggestion to them, but that had absolutely nothing to do with my wish to “subtract” and empty everything, as I had done for the castle in Denmark. And so I can confess that the meeting with Svoboda was such that we had to tell him the truth, which was that this stage design was to be created with Svoboda’s collaboration and in that sense, the utter respect and affection that I felt for Svoboda has never diminished, even if the reality is different: the set was fantastic, but not for Svoboda, who has done other wonderful things throughout his career, because we weren’t able to use his suggestions at all. And the large lines that Roberto had managed to create and that had made possible another cult production, because it was absolutely from Roberto and myself, including the famous moon that dangled down on cords from above. In 1983, Roberto Francia realized the sets for Don Quixote, one of the most interesting works of your career. The costumes were by Emanuele Luzzati. What memories do you have of that artistic combination? The combination was born from the fact that this show, Don Quixote, had the emblematic title of Don Quixote, fragments of a theatrical discourse, almost reminding me of something from Barthes. We decided to create Don Quixote, his world, his adventures on a stage and so we focused our attention and efforts on building something more real than real, an empty stage, though the stage was surrounded with old objects, it wasn’t just a theatrical installation but there was even an array of theatrical machinery, the wind machine, the ropes of the lifts to pull up the sets.... it was a type of studio belonging to somebody that had always lived in theatre, a whole world. In that beautiful space that Roberto created there was the contrast of colour and fantasy of Luzzati’s costumes and I feel it was a good collaboration between the two. Among the other works to be mentioned, there was Caligola from 1983 and La Venexiana from 1984. To what extent did your stage designer’s creative skills contribute to the artistic success of portraying these texts? Well, the story is different for Caligola than it is for La Venexiana, because for Caligola we had to create a space where Rome, the power, all that which is contained in the work, was represented by simple wooden platforms, even though we had the stage at Rome’s Teatro Argentina. It was my first production as Artistic Director at the Teatro di Roma. And I also remember large veils, large curtains; I remember other things, Caligola’s death was very beautiful and suggestive, seen with backlighting against a large veil and it was excessively enlarged and the figure fell down together with the veil itself at the finale, that was really beautiful. The story is different for La Venexiana. It’s a story like a journey made in different legs and it was my second experience at directing. My relationship with Roberto started with La Venexiana at the Festival of the Two Worlds at Spoleto, when there was an mature, very experienced actress, Laura Adani, and a very small theatre. It was a simple set, nothing special, far different from the sets Roberto had created for Valeria Moriconi and just very different - I say so because its funny - from the scene that later, Roberto created for La Venexiana with Claudia Cardinale at the Teatro des Italiens a few years ago. They’re three different phases of this text, which was very dear to me and that saw Roberto make good use of his skill and ability to use abstraction, but in an absolutely different way. In this sense it was a step forward for Roberto Francia, for example, I remember that while in La Venexiana there was a bed, because obviously the bed is the basis of La Venxiana, it’s a strong point in the La Venexiana with Valeria Moriconi, I even eliminated the bed, the young man entered, a servant entered and the Venexiana followed with an imperious manner. In the La Venexiana with Valeria Morinconi and later, in the one with Claudia Cardinale,

the bed disappeared, the Venexiana, a mature protagonist, who was a beautiful widow, full of vitality, maybe on her last throws of passion, well, she looked at her lover, pulled a beautiful red brocade blanket out of a closet and threw it on the floor and they did the love scene on top of that. If you had to talk about other productions from your artistic collaboration, which ones would you mention? For their differences, I’d choose Galileo maybe because you’ll print a few images of it in this magazine. We constructed a large globe, divided into sections, where you enter, you move up and down inside and it was a very beautiful construction, really another aspect of Roberto Francia, the sculptor, which should be remembered, because in my opinion, it was the set that distinguished itself from the others where we emptied the stage. Actually, in Galileo, the stage was enhanced in height, width and depth by this very beautiful, multi-functional globe. For what reason is Roberto Francia’s experience in opera limited only to Lucia of Lammermoor? He created a beautiful set, like in Così fan tutte in Lecce in 1996. As we know, directing an opera often happens within a context, which is less of an ensemble than theatre is. In theatre there’s an ensemble that I carry with me, that heeds the author, the set designer, the lighting; for opera direction, which for me is a diversion in respect to my activity, that I do one or two a year, they’re all just different occasions so sometimes, because of my commitments or Roberto’s commitments, we can’t have occasion to work together, except in certain situations, like recitals, which are very beautiful representations. I’ll make an example: when I tried La Bohème with Folon, who was the set designer, Roberto was busy with the set design with Massimo Ranieri who debuted in direction at the Sferisterio in Macerata with I Pagliacci and La Cavalleria Rusticana . In that same period we split up: I was with Folon and he was with Massimo Ranieri. This is a part of life; in reality my working relationship ought to be called a working relationship with prose theatre. Your working relationship with Roberto Francia has covered a period of time that spans the length of your entire artistic production. According to some critics, the double billing between director and set designer can be a limit for a director, according to others, its a strong point. What is it for you? I feel it’s a point of strength that has the possibility of being interrupted now and then, without trauma, as has often happened; the not very frequent alternation with Luzzati was undoubtedly a way of subtracting myself from the danger of this limit. What final conclusions would you draw from your long artistic collaboration with Roberto Francia? It’s been a long and fundamental artistic experience for me and it has also been fundamental for Roberto’s Francia’s life, too. My tendency is always to have the man and the theatrical space in front of me and everything then is born from there, so I try to avoid, where possible, what I consider to be a big demon: the construction of a set that limits man’s fantasy within space. I believe that contemporary theatre has to have two reference points, two magic words, (and that is part of Roberto’s and my work), in relation to the set design: illusion and allusion. I believe that during our long-term collaboration we have always tried to realize just this, together.

INTERVIEW WITH ROBERTO FRANCIA

by Rodolfo Di Giammarco

Roberto Francia has a face of gentle STRUCTURE, whose smile is of vital BREADTH, a glance of intense DEPTH, a solid, velvety VOLUME of voice, a character of infinite FLEXIBILITY, whose skin COLOUR tends towards dark skinned, he has a classical SPACIOUSNESS of modules and a practicable geometrical STYLE, his surface has the SOLIDITY OF WOOD, he has STABILITY in references to the Commedia dell’Arte, he has the skill to mould the SPACE, and he has WINGS fashioned from highly cultured poetics that are timeless and without mannerisms. From this “indentikit” of spatial coincidences and architectural lines for the theatre one can safely assume that Francia is by nature, and by the immense amount of work done, a production designer. But not only. He is an artist of symbols, of materials, of stage design, of sculpture, of surfaces, of words that have bodies that are inert though significant. And, last but not least, he is a sociable man yet reserved, a tender-hearted yet severe person, a theatre-man for all seasons and a formulator of contemporary bas-reliefs, a contemplative mind and a skilled craftsman and cabinet-maker. A great man who seems to have sprung from Covili’s so very human naïve paintings. A stage designer that sculpts utopias and who naturally rejects worldliness. One who constructs entire domains made for dreaming.

As you are both an artist and a stage designer, what relationship is established between designing for the stage and creativity applied to sculpture and painting? For decades a relationship exists with the theatrical space that happily exceeds the dogma of naturalism and realism. A set can therefore occupy the space with greater creative freedom and this freedom encompasses a different rapport with sculpture and painting, and with light, naturally, in synchrony with the director’s tendencies. You have always ruled out sticking to a particular method, but through your sets a clear language of lines, geometrical perspectives, encyclopaedic symbols from Diderot to D’Alamberet however emerge. Are you inspired by constructive foundations on which to base stories, by scientific horizons, by schemes that outline emotions or by principles of metaphysical art? Perhaps I could claim some kind of method, which always starts me off, perhaps unwittingly, from “constructive foundations on which to base stories”. I think this belongs to my way of working, but which doesn’t necessarily translate into sticking to a particular method, which in itself could adversely affect research or obstruct the translation of emotions into a stage performance. For descriptive forms you have substituted a basic language of signs that narrate themes, content and actions partly through the evocative properties of materials in their bare state: how do you judge and measure the conversion of wood, metal, rope and raw materials into theatrical representation? Often, though not always, subtraction leads to giving more weight to choices of material and can prove useful in giving substance to words and gestures. I try to work towards subtraction while always highlighting the evocative capacity of each chosen material. For example, I believe there exists a wooden tragicalness and a metal tragicalness and so choosing one material over another is never an indifferent choice. In what terms of architecture, structures and mental building blocks do you organise basic ideas for a production according to its author, the work’s classicism or contemporaneity, the type of drama, and whether for a small or larger-scale theatre production? It all starts with a reading of the text, with its “logical analysis”, which presupposes the successive imaginative analysis. It’s a basic lesson that I have learnt from Scaparro and from his way of constructing a production and it represents for me the first building block of the mind from which to begin creating the sets. More specifically, is there a type of set design that identifies to a greater extent an era, an author, a genre, a series of titles, or is there from time to time a particular influence from a directorial vision and a dialogue (one thinks of Maurizio Scaparro, with whom you regularly collaborate on theatrical productions), which from a series of productions reveals a creative path, a priority within a work? I think that, particularly with the work I have done together with Scaparro, a language has evolved; I would say that it is a style that preferably relates to certain guide lines that run through and intersect from production to production, at times in fragments and at other times for evocative affinity. Getting back to the work with Scaparro, I am struck by the obstinate poetical and political will to communicate through signs, different though they may be, which are always readable or at least in as much as to aid the direction. I would say that the priority is that of arriving at simplicity (which is not superficiality or over-simplification) and which is the most difficult thing to achieve.

If you had to acknowledge a vocation, which authors and which works or productions have given rise to the strongest identification between your own productions and your most personal affinities? In brief, I would say Hamlet; The Life of Galileo; Pulcinella; Cirano de Bergerac, Six Characters in Search of an Author. What advantages, what interaction, what types of association and what stimuli go to create a regular, longstanding collaboration with a director like Maurizio Scaparro? The stimulus is certainly that of never stopping short of reaching one’s goals either on stage or beyond; I’m thinking of the salutary confusion of languages of the Carnevale del Teatro created by Scaparro in Venice or the multimedia experience of Don Quixote or of the latest creative efforts of Scaparro linked to the digital films of his most recent theatrical productions. To what aesthetics or theatrical schools of thought do you attribute a form of teaching from which you have since left behind, but still recognise as having provided you with a formative background? The experience with Giovanni Poli at Ca’ Foscari, to better understand the scenic language of the Commedia dell’Arte, the opening up of the mind due to the teachings of Svoboda, and the opportunities that Scaparro has given me right from the start to continue to surprise myself, to have fun and to grow with the theatre. There is always a travelling theatre, more or less metaphorical, in the structures of your sets. What would be your basic, unifying theme in the succession of authors, productions, themes and genres? The journey, the recurrent theme in many of our productions naturally leads to the idea of the travelling theatre or the comics’ cart or Punchinello’s old boat or the flight towards another dreamed-of place. Does the evocative, conceptual value, but which is also craftsmanlike and very concrete, of the footboards, another topos of your stage design, reveal the secret of a Commedia dell’Arte applicable to every period, language and history? Certainly the Commedia dell’Arte, from which I started out on my first experiences in Venice, plays a part. But there is more (and maybe too much). Whatever the nature of the production I always start with a bare stage, and almost always return to the stage. This must be a kind of chronic theatrical ailment of mine. In your conception of the theatrical space there are often panels forming walls and partitions. Can you cite historical roots, any homage to structural elements or new perspectives applied to the productions that have occasionally been equipped with these metal plates-doors-slabs-panels-volumes-monoliths? At times the panels that form walls are an easy way of covering and concealing a scenic space, but they almost always act as a chronicle and not a story in my stage designs; at other times they may represent an autonomous value. At this point I would like to pay homage to a dear friend and maestro, Lele Luzzati. To him I owe the first experience of a fascinating assemblage of old ship doors, in Brecht’s Trommen in der Nacht (Tamburi in the Night) directed by Aldo Trionfo, partially reutilized by Scaparro in Amerika by Kafka. What significance can a curtain within the curtain assume? A curtain almost always serves to begin the element of play in the theatre. Two curtains can also serve to intentionally confuse this element.

In which productions by Scaparro has the stage been required to be an additional character not created by the author, but in absolute harmony with the author’s intent and with the work itself? Among many, the walls of iron in a nineteen-seventies production of Hamlet, to those of Richard II, and the sphere inhabited by Galileo spring to mind. What formula contains, for example, the robust, spherical molecular ogive that serves both as cockpit and the Leonardesque celestial body in Life of Galileo? The Leonardesque celestial body to which you refer, which is a sphere inspired by Pacioli’s solids, and which had in itself the dual function of living within a difficult space that was closed, but also open to the hope of conquering, day after day, while scrutinising the starry sky with his spyglass. The thought comes to me that one of my most solidly constructed sets is perhaps one of the most open, within a scenic space used to the full. How much of a necessary dreamscape and how much of an impossible Utopia is there in the wooden moon of Cyrano de Bergerac by Francia and Scaparro? I will try, if you will allow me, to respond by modifying the terms. In the moon of Scaparro’s Cyrano, lowered from the ceiling on two theatre ropes, the idea is that it contains, or hopefully contains, impossible dreams and the necessary utopias. What type of anti-figurative signs and symbols have you fully formed of images in the journey of Pulcinella? I think of the ruined boat that is transformed into a stage, of the comics’ cart that is also transformed into a stage and of the large Encyclopaedia characters that are not able to transform themselves into “human” theatre. The breached wall powerfully placed at centre-stage, a strong emblem and dramatic logos of Six Characters by Scaparro, suggests so many conflicts in the sense of everyday life and in 1900s theatre. Have you ever thought that someone could liken it to that cautionary fissure especially incorporated in the wall of the mainline station in Bologna, at the site of a traumatic tragedy of terrible proportions, an unhealed wound? [The bomb blast in 1980, which killed 85 people] No, I have never thought that, though I would have liked to. I like to think that theatre can lead to these connections. Thank you for having helped me to believe, in a Don Quixote kind of way, in the occasional utility of our craft. Is there a process, an ideal or implicit path that you have followed between authors and dramaturgies throughout your long working relationship with Scaparro? A long and happy pathway between authors and dramaturgies when working with Scaparro is certainly that which does not necessarily pass through theatrical texts, but favours, for example, the liberal relationship that is created between novel and stage with results that to me seem to have been significant, from Fu Mattia Pascal to Don Quixote to Memoirs of Hadrian, and maybe also Mémoires by Goldoni, which we are about to produce. If you had to define the process of creativity outside the theatre, that of a more freely artistic creativity, to what kind of belonging or kind of sensitivity would you attribute it? That of sculpture, which is very difficult and which for a time I loved. In your exhibition you selected Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a touchstone, (or better, a “touch-iron” or “touch-copper”), between theatrical iconography and the plastic-volumetric language of

sculpture. What common affinities, integrations, symbols and rifts are there in the two kinds of reading? The exhibition in Rome was entitled the “Teatro della Memoria”, and reflected periods of collaboration with Scaparro (in particular for Hamlet). Hypotheses resurfacing over the course of time of how to project outwards (or if to project outwards) from the scenic space without repudiating it, forging ahead whilst experimenting, thanks to my experience with Mirko, with such a hard, almost hostile material such as only iron knows how to be. So this same material, the same rust used for the single tables, for me expressed that “theatrical” tragicalness (which I have also characterized in the recent use of copper) and which led to rational choices of different materials. Perhaps it was a sign that, as Vito Apuleio wrote with reference to these tables of the memory, originates from the “historical desperation” to return to manual ability and the play of cross-references that was indeed in theatre, from which I started out, that I found the way out, or at least the illusion of breaking out. For the volume “Memorie del Teatro” – a record of ancient Greek and Roman theatres commissioned by Scaparro for the UNESCO conference on global heritage in 2002 - you prepared a map of ancient theatre sites scattered throughout the old continent. What coordinates of distance and coincidences emerge from this? What relationships between art, history, space and humankind are witnessed? What theatrical traditions have stood the test of time? This extraordinary experience (which I had already begun in Seville for the Universal Expo of 1992) allowed me to rediscover and verify first hand the enormous cultural patrimony, and in particular that of theatre, of the “old Greek and Roman world”, with its epicentre in Italy, in Greece, and with precious traces that span from Scotland to Afghanistan. Above all, it has made me think at length on the extraordinary significance, in terms of both past and present, of our Mediterranean civilization and on the concept of love and beauty (in that period I worked with Scaparro on the Memoirs of Hadrian. Where and when both love and beauty were offended, in the Mediterranean the damage was evident, and devastating, often due to society’s indifference and ignorance. If you had to act within a set designed by yourself, when and where would you have most naturally performed as an actor? Right at the very beginning of my stage design experience, by chance I found myself acting on the stage, in Finland, on tour with a company from Ca’ Foscari in a Commedia dell’Arte production. They needed a young, willing person and so the director, Giovanni Poli asked me to take centre-stage – as a tree! This was my one and only (naturally unrepeatable) experience as an “actor”. Occasionally, though, while designing and building the sets for a production, I am curiously stimulated to imagine myself as, an albeit invisible, tree in the centre of the stage and to observe not only the constructed space to which I have contributed, but the imaginative ideas that surround me and which help me to live. © THE SCENOGRAPHER

IMMAGINI

Bozzetto di Roberto Francia per la scena di “In alto mare” di Slavomir Mrozek, regia di Vito Molinari. (1964, Treatro Sabile di Bologna)

Riccardo II di W. Shakespeare. Regia di Maurizio Scaparro. Scene di Roberto Francia. Costumi di Vittorio Rossi. (1975, Teatro Popolare di Roma

"Il giovane Faust" di J.W. Goethe. Bozzetto e scene di Roberto Francia, Costumi Vera Marzot, aiuto regia Fernando Scarpa, regia Maurizio Scaparro.

Bozzetto di Roberto Francia per la scena de IL TEATRO COMICO di Carlo Goldoni. Costumi di Emanuele Luzzati in collaborazione con Giudi Piccolo. Regia di Maurizio Scaparro. (1993. Teatro Olimpico di Vicenza.)

ANDRIA di Publio Afro Terenzio, nella versione di Niccolò Machiavelli. Regia di Marco Bernardi.Scene e costumi di Roberto Francia. 1979 Teatro Olimpico di Vicenza. Opera che ha avuto un notevole successo di critica e di pubblico ed

è stata replicata per dieci anni in Italia e all’estero e registrata e messa in onda dalla Terza Rete Rai nazionale.

Bozzetto di Roberto Francia per l’opera: Vita di Galileo di Bertolt Brecht.

Bozzetto di Roberto Francia per l’opera Don Chisciotte, frammenti di un discorso teatrale (1983

Cirano di Bergerac , di E. Rostand, Regia di Maurizio Scaparro. Scene di Roberto Francia. (1977, Teatro Popolare di Roma).

Vita di Galileo, di Bertolt Brecht. La costruzione del grande globo. Regia di Maurizio Scaparro. Scene di Roberto Francia. (1988, Teatro Argentina di Roma)

Cavalleria Rusticana di Pietro Mascagni. Regia Massimo Ranieri. Scene di Roberto Francia. (2003, Teatro Sferisterio Cavalleria Rusticana di Pietro Mascagni. Bozzetto di Roberto Francia. (2003, Teatro Sferisterio di Macerata) di Macerata)

Pulcinella prodotto dal Teatro di Roma, per la regìa di Maurizio Scaparro,1985-86. Scene di Roberto Francia.

Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore di Luigi Pirandello. Scene di Roberto Francia. Sul fondo della scena, invece del muro nudo

imposto dalla tradizione c'è una finta parete disadorna, grigia, lacerata, macchiata di calce.

L’intramontabile testo Memorie di Adriano di Marguerite Yourcenar, immaginaria autobiografia del grande imperatore di Roma che governò dal 117 al 138 d.C., è diventato uno spettacolo culto con l’adattamento di Jean Launay, la regia di Maurizio Scaparro,le scene di Roberto Francia. Da quindici anni viene rappresentato con un successo inesauribile dal grande Giorgio Albertazzi.