Philip Timy debuted in the national premiere of the show, produced by Genesio Fest, one time show written along with Lorenzo ChiuchiuWith Matthew Prosperi, Gianluca Vesque and school actors Permanent Theater of Turin who took part in the master class “For you, I will make heavenly flowers bleed (mask of desire)”.
Accompanied by his Corgi Tarquinia, Filippo, Timi spent a week with the students of the master class, other guest actors, journalists, technicians, who together turned the small town of San Ginesio in the Marche region into an actor’s village.
Meeting and chatting with him is as natural as meeting Massimo Viviani at the Lume bar.
We talked together about the performance he had prepared with the final year students of the Turin stable acting school under the direction of Leonardo Lidi.
He sits down and puts his on the table hang, a metallic idiophone musical instrument created in Switzerland twenty years ago. Its generic sound will accompany the reading of poetry during our conversation. “No interviews, just an informal conversation,” Filippo explains. But that’s enough: his hypnotic voice pulls along the tropes of a show that doesn’t even have a name.
“When I work, I’m not used to finding titles.” Thus begins Filippo Timi, who is locked up for five days in a “crazy and desperate” study of one of his rewritings. lost heaven Miller.
Behind the mask of good and evil
“We decided to call him Behind the mask of good and evilbecause the actor must be beyond good and evil. He cannot judge, for example, Richard III. You’re not making excuses for this, but if you’re going to embody it, you need to find the big question that caused this mask to become the terrible character that it is. And it’s always love. It will be so that I am a child of the 80s and Beautiful from Retequattro. In this case, it is Satan who does everything out of love.
The catchphrase of this show is: “For your sake, Gabriel, I will make the tops of heaven bleed.” In Miller’s Paradise, the angels’ eyes are closed because they were told that if they opened them, the divine light would blind them. But Satan falls in love with Gabriel, although he does not see him. At some point, Satan wants to see his love and wants that love to look at him. Drunk, he opens his eyes and finds that no divine light is blinding them. Satan tries to convince Gabriel that it is wonderful to love, but it would be even more beautiful to see a loved one as well. By some means he succeeds, but in the end Gabriele gouges out his eyes, and Satan rips out his heart.”
“For me, Satan is a symbol, like Zarathustra or Judas. If I had to do a performance about Judas, I would do a scene where Christ asks, begs Judas to betray him. Satan is central to this story. Unlike Milton, who separates good from evil, I believe that they are somewhat similar to light and darkness: they are two sides of the same coin. It depends how you see it. First of all, they cannot exist without each other: if there is light, then there must be darkness, otherwise I have no light. Satan falls, but the fall is necessary to rise again.”
I’m almost blind. I have an eye disease that makes me unable to see… The work of imagination that my brain does is enormous. But, unlike yours, he is like a flower: you do not feel sorry for yourself. I brought the boys into my state of darkness and blindness.
How does it fit into the character?
I think about how things are in intimacy. For example, I think about how Hamlet holds a bird in his hand when he goes to the bathroom. Because yes, he is Hamlet, but he feels the same as any other person.
When the children arrived at the theater on their first day, the scripts were on the floor. I put them in a circle, closed the shutters, and they were in darkness. I said: now read the text and in two hours we will try. They were confused. There is a solution. You have to wait until your eyes get used to it. Half an hour later, when I returned, they were hungry demons who were reading in small groups where they found a faint penetrating light.
Why such a provocation? Because I’m almost blind. I have an eye disease that prevents me from seeing. I don’t learn names because I don’t get attached to faces. I can’t see the facial expression of the person talking to me. In the theatre, paradoxically, this problem is easier to deal with: I don’t get the shock of changing my vision because, as I don’t see it in real life, the same thing happens on stage. The work of imagination that my brain does is enormous.
But, unlike yours, he is like a flower: you do not feel sorry for yourself. I brought the boys into my state of darkness and blindness.
When I go to Cannes for the premiere of Bellocchio, I don’t watch the film, I see that actors and actresses of the level of Nicole Kidman, for example, see me. I do not see: I see myself seen and lower my gaze, because I am ashamed.
What is the impact of preparing a show in a medieval village while being here in Sana’a?
Ginesio?
A lot. This show was born for this context. It was born thanks to an invitation to participate by Rodolfo di Giammarco (historical journalist and theater critic of “La Repubblica” – nda) and Leonardo Lidi. I rewrote the lyrics for these guys. I did not know them, and in five days I entrusted them with the roles and rehearsed. Twelve guys is a lot, and it is not easy to be able to harmonize them. But we succeeded. In all my shows, I write the lyrics, rehearse with the actors and rewrite the lyrics for them.
An actor is not a great actor despite difficulties, but thanks to them..
What struck you about these guys?
And all this is very good. I was struck by their seriousness, their attitude, their understanding and the political value of the theatre. Not because the theater necessarily has to talk about politics, but because they understand that an artistic gesture is itself a political gesture.
I tried to treat them like Bellocchio, when he gives you information like: “perfect Filippo, but here you turn on the darkness.” Obviously he wants to provoke you. Or maybe I stumble and Marco says yes because he wanted me to stumble. In such cases, I trust Stanislavsky, for whom, even if you do not understand the phrase, but you catch its beauty, put it aside. Maybe one day you will understand it, or maybe not, but the beauty will remain. What is in the darkness, I have yet to discover. This sentence means everything and nothing, but even if I do not understand it, it is beautiful, and my lack of understanding does not detract from the beauty of this sentence.
I believe that maturity should be about taking care of yourself, which perhaps comes through taking care of others. Sometimes it’s the same. And theater, in my opinion, is a way to take care of the symbols that each of us is.
She brought the boys to her territory. He said “I can’t see” and made them work in the dark. This created an imbalance that forced them to find a new one. Today we are all used to making pain spectacular. Have you been able to get them to use suffering as a means to transform the imbalance into a new balance?
Perhaps I succeeded. Not only with them, but also with me. I seriously live with a disability. If I go out in the evening with a dog and no one is with me, it is dangerous, because I may not see a drug dealer who thinks that I saw him deal drugs and beat me. My whole life is built on the work of finding value in adversity.
This year, I finally realized that stuttering saved my life. For years I went on stage afraid of stuttering. It fed me with energy that reached the audience, but I always demonized it, blamed it. I understood that he saved my life, because there were still a lot of dangerous things that I had not seen. At 21, without school, the first actor Barberio Corsetti to play Oedipus, I would have dangerous things that I didn’t see. .
At 21, out of school, the first actor to play Oedipus, Barberio Corsetti, I had to shit myself. Sharks circled around me, but I didn’t see them. I was engaged in figure skating, pirouettes, twine: I really had a talent for this. Maybe because I was desperate, because I was hungry, because I was in pain, because I didn’t get enough sleep. I felt like I was going crazy. At 21, you’re a skater, you have the energy to conquer the world, and the only thing that bothered me was that I stuttered. I understand now. I realized that I should have been scared for much more serious reasons. But no. So I would like to give these guys such a tool.
An actor is a great actor not in spite of difficulties, but because of them. I have done this experiment with other laboratories. Find value in what happens, not in what we expected. In my opinion, this is a matter of life.
They say it’s a flower with a stone on its head, don’t feel sorry for yourself: it will come out anyway. This is true. I don’t think difficulties make you strong: difficulties can help you understand who is strong. But even those who are strong, at the 99th door slammed in their faces, get tired. At fifty, however strong I may be, I must agree to calm down for a moment. Then maybe I’ll start collecting them again. I believe that maturity should be about taking care of yourself, which perhaps comes through taking care of others. Sometimes it’s the same. And theater, in my opinion, is a way to take care of the symbols that each of us is.
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