Last Saturday, as part of the now consolidated initiative “KAMPSA – The siege of Compsa”, the theatrical performance was staged “Ego Compsanus Sum”, by Lucio and Salvatore Mazza from an idea by Gerardo Chiancone, as part of the project: “Itineraries of Irpini between culture, history, theater and traditions”. The intervention is co-financed by the Poc Campania 2014-2020, urban regeneration, tourism and culture policies. Unitary program of cultural, naturalistic and food and wine tourist itineraries of national and international scope of the Campania Region with the municipality of Conza and Gioventù Conzana.
This year the figure of Statius Trebius has given way on the scene to Publius Gavius and his story, set during the years of the governorship of Sicily by Gaius Licinius Verres and reconstructed thanks to painstaking work of bibliographic research, then textual drafting and finally of performative action.
Verres was never in Compsa, but he was linked to this place of crystalline silence, dominated by the west wind, by his greed, his cruelty, his wickedness. In fact, at his behest, Publius Gavius, municeps Consanus, was flagellated and crucified in the square of Messina, while affirming his rights as a civis romanus, while invoking freedom and the lex Romana against the abuses of the governor of the island.
“Our path of theatrical research has always kept alive the need to recreate and regenerate ourselves with new forms of narratives, even those that draw from our past in Irpini, so that they are always a beacon of scenic creation – says Salvatore Mazza -. The performance tends to imagine what may have happened not only to Gavius, of whom Cicero tells in the Actio quinta of the Verrine, but in the entire community of Conza at the news of his unjust death by crucifixion. The arrogance and impiety of Verres; the pain of a wife waiting for a child who will never know the father; the disbelief of the Conza community, vainly faithful to the City; the indignation of Cicero who shouts from the top of his seat “O sweet name of freedom ! Has everything then fallen so low that a Roman citizen was beaten with rods and put on the cross?”.
And, above all, in that “Civis romanus sum” powerfully pronounced by Gavio, all the dignitas and the mythical, anthropological and sacral facies of the hirpus resonate: harpe tahè kyuì (from the Oscan of the “wolf who fights for freedom”) of a history that will be indestructible over the centuries.
The actors who took part in the performance were: Salvatore Mazza, Andrea De Ruggiero, Felice Cataldo, Santa Capriolo, Laura Tropeano, Sabino Balestrieri, Pasquale Migliaccio, Umberto Branchi, Federica Avagnano, Luca Picariello, Roberta Buonavita, little Carmine Tropeano directed by Lucio Mazza.
