The oral story should be included among the intangible heritage of humanity, if it is not already there: it comes to mind following the cloister of San Paolo animated on Thursday afternoon by the web of voices from the “living books”, voices like openings into intimate, personal stories, punctuated with the names of other people and places perhaps never heard before but which, in the story, immediately resonate as familiar and necessary, evocative and clear.
The project Each person is a book, a bridge between generationspromoted by the Montanara Social Library with the patronage of the Municipality of Parma, was born inspired by the idea of the Human Library, the human library that flourished in Denmark in 2000 and then spread to many countries as a practice of oral storytelling, sharing of singular stories that become plural : in this living library, each reader is invited to sit in front of a stranger, preparing to listen to his or her particular story, entering into a dialogue, leafing through the memories and expectations of the interlocutor and thus agreeing to enter that forest that each story represents.
Promoted by Montanara laboratory“precious cultural heritage”, as he highlighted Elisa Longerithe project involved and brought together people of different generations, young people and the elderly, encouraging the overcoming of distances and prejudices through oral storytelling, theatrical practice and a video workshop conducted by the video-maker Lorenzo Bresolin.
At the beginning of the presentation, Marta Corradipresident of the Montanara Democratic Laboratory, recalled Alessandra Belledito whom the project is dedicated, “because Alessandra, who recently passed away, did so much to create a bridge between the different generations of this city precisely by using theatrical language and, in a broader sense, the human instrument of culture” .
If it is easier to confess to a perfect stranger sitting at a table in a bar or to the girl with whom you find yourself sharing the same compartment on a train, this happens, perhaps, because there is less fear of being judged by those who know nothing. our. The oral narration of one’s story to an unknown listener by a living book was born with the aim of helping an unarmed meeting, free of prejudices and capable, indeed, of making the listener leap beyond the fences of judgement, fences that are torn down precisely by the possibility of entering the plot of an existence guided by the voice of the protagonist of that same human story in an untimely and unprecedented closeness.
The results of the project, which involved the students of the 3M linguistic class of the Romagnosi high school, followed with passion by the teacher Emanuela Montagna, has been merged into a volume, published by Edicta. On the cover, the photo of trees whose branches intertwine, silhouetted against the sky: an image that, as observed Enrica Conforti, “represents the interweaving of the stories of the voices that resonate between the pages of the volume, stories told orally and which then became videos or written texts, real bridges uniting different generations in sharing memories and aspirations, crises and wounds but also of turning points and bright moments. What all the voices have in common is the desire to leave a good mark and the willingness to trust others in order to build conditions of peace.”
In the transition phase from the oral story to the written narrative, a delicate weaving of introspection, re-enactment and memory, the group of adults was followed by Maria Concetta Antonetti, Elisa Barbieri And Elisabetta Berciani of the Free University of the Autobiography of Anghiari while the group of boys and girls found in the theatrical experience conducted by Beatrice Baruffini the key to being able to illuminate even the corners usually left in the shadows of one’s story, those that rarely find the right to citizenship at school.
“Thanks to this project, carried out as a Pcto path, we have come to be able to express our fears but also our passions, transcribing the falls and small victories, becoming authors of ourselves starting from a theater experience that was release”, testified Erika and Angelica, students of the Romagnosi high school.
To find a way into the ministerial programs that do not include stories from behind the desk, Beatrice Baruffini started from the photos kept by the students on their cell phones. A common gesture that becomes invention and revelation when the children were asked to look at the shadow side of the images to tell what is not seen in the photo, the margin, the out-of-focus, the behind the scenes of the scene, the reverse shot of a shot: “The kids started to talk about themselves starting from what we don’t usually see about them and, in this sense, the theater was a pretext to meet them, a way to change perspective on things by going another direction compared to the common one”, says Baruffini.
The theatrical and storytelling experience brought into the classroom allowed us to “look into each other’s eyes and get to know each other in a profound way like it hadn’t happened before, going together beyond appearances thanks to the passion and wonder that arise from the encounter with each other “, says Emanuela Montagna for whom the project “also allowed the kids to get to know each other, helping them to overcome small divisions in discovering the value of all diversity”.
The video laboratory of the Living Books also contributed to this outcome, which “proved to be a tool for great introspection and emotional release on the part of the children”, observed Bresolin. Each testimony, recorded in the school’s great hall set up for the occasion as a professional set, “was an opportunity to discover how every boy and girl is a guardian of fragility and potential, shyness and deep reflections that ask for listening and expression”.
At the end of the presentation, the possibility of entering the human library spread along the galleries of the cloister, choosing who to sit in front of, and which story to listen to.
First stop of the journey, Alma, beautiful and elegant narrator whose face reminds me of that of the poet Szymborska. In his hands he has a notebook with a black cover: “My school diary, years 1953-1954-1955, entitled Memories: in this diary-book now undone which remains together with the thread sewn by me, after seventy years, one can see and read the memories of my schoolmates and friends who are around seventy, like the years of the diary…”.
With an act of trust, the listener has already taken the first step to enter the forest of a story in which he knows he will find shadows, beasts perhaps, but also the filtering of a light through the branches.
