Director and born story-teller, Pippo Delbono can talk about Pasolini or Beckett and goes from anecdote to allegory. It's a way for him to stage this theatre of differences and sharing where he has devoted his efforts since he began working with his team. Italian Delbono set up his company - some of whose members are people on the sidelines of society - in 1986 with Pepe Robledo,. From Le Temps des Assassins (The Time of Assassins, 1987) to Urlo (2004) and in between Il Silenzio (Silence), Guerra (War) or Gente di plastica (Plastic People), this so-called ‘theatre of necessity' has made a place for itself thanks to his intense views which stem from actual experience. From parades to rituals, from dance to the written word, his performances are born out of tales of real life which he transfers to the stage. They also have a musical element and often are influenced by cinema.
At the Avignon Festival, Pippo Delbono presented Guerra (War), Il Silenzio (Silence) and La Rabbia (Anger) in 2002, Urlo and Enrico V (Henry V) in 2004.
Just a table and chair, and a glass, on stage. Pared down to essentials, Pippo Delbono's elementary theatre is stripped bare. In Récits de Juin (Tales of June), alone on the stage, the Italian actor-director opens up with words and small gestures that are particularly appropriate for capturing and releasing the intensity of a commitment to what is necessity for humankind and for the theatre. Midway between confidential and conferential, the somehow secret exposure of this existential research reigns with and without modesty, in between eloquent silences and sometimes improvised rough talk.
Delbono walks on the thread of his thoughts like a sleep-walker and recalls the “physical memory of the wound” upon which he builds his productions and regroups with the help of poetical stage-writing that comes from the body.
This intimacy is haunted by his encounters and by the presence of his accomplices in the act of creation, from Pepe Robledo to Bobò – the small man with impaired speech and hearing who Delbono rescued from psychiatric hospital where he was living. Delbono tells his own tale as well as theirs interspersed with excerpts from the plays, Urlo, Le Temps des Assassins (Time of the Assassins), La Rabbia (Anger), Henry V etc. And these Récits de Juin shore-up the artist's own truth and that of the maskless actor, as he abandons himself in an astonishing moment to the stage.
Irène Filiberti
Distribution
Conception : Pippo Delbono
avec : Pippo Selbono
son : Pepe Robledo
Production
Production : Compagnia Pippo Delbono