The little theater of Cremona is a definition that lends itself to easy irony, sometimes guessed, other times a little excessive. What is important is the message that he would like to offer to the people of Cremona but not only that, it is a message that can contain certain values or transmit others that each individual person will interpret in a strictly personal way. The beauty lies precisely in this, the fact of being able to give personal ideas that manage to give birth to new ideas or forms of comparison, starting from these we can truly renew what we often see as a continuous repetition of historical errors.
We are in 1988 at the XVII Triennale of Milan where the topic of the international exhibition is “The city of the world and the future of metropolises”, the city of Cremona also appears in the series of works present, a city that is represented with a historical image of Piazza del Duomo surrounded by a structure, similar to a puppet theater, enriched by something that could recall a laid table. The exhibition is curated by a group of people who report to the scientific director of the architect exhibition Marco Romanothe Triennale has always represented an enormous stage in the world, a sort of melting pot of ideas that are taken up in almost every corner of the globe.
The writing under the theater in Cremona is worth reading, it is balanced and certainly aimed at citizens “Sometimes a public space is imagined as a whole by the community as a comfortable and elegant environment”. Almost 40 years have passed since that little theater and that writing, Piazza del Duomo is still more or less like the proposed image; the city, perhaps, a little less. The little theater of Cremona is a work that tells a lot about a city, it sees it as a public square but which has as its side the tranquility of a set domestic table. A public space, often unsuitable for the comfort of the individual, which becomes comfortable and elegant like a small private world, a slice of daily life told in a square full of people where everyone is part of that image.
Cremona has changed since 1988, like every city that evolves has found different roads to travel, whether those roads are bumpy and destined to get lost or streamlined and quiet is a completely different story, it depends a lot on the choices made. In that little theater the real protagonist is not the square, at least in my way of seeing it, but the community, that community which increasingly seems to be placed on the margins of decisions or choices in relation to the road ahead. The square is the container, beautiful in its colors and contents, which welcomes those citizens who have been, for centuries, the fulcrum of the life of a community. Moving away from crucial decisions is not only a harmful step for citizens, but it also becomes harmful for those who should choose which path to take. It is certain that politics must decide, on the basis of a popular mandate, which direction to take; the key principle of democracy lies precisely in the role that is entrusted to a person, but the concrete response to people’s needs seems to disappear into the background in favor of projects less and less aimed at that square and what surrounds it, which knew how to collect and make live a community.
Cremona has changed quite a bit in 40 years, if you think about it carefully, 40 years are nothing compared to the 2200 years of history it brings with it, the city is not a metropolis with all its problems, but it still sees the spaces that made it a comfortable and elegant environment. The need to rediscover, rediscover and return to living those spaces around Piazza del Duomo up to the outskirts is the real theater, the good one, the one made to tell the story behind a fairy tale, because it brings the spectator closer to a world that perhaps he already knows but who would like to try to live differently. In these 40 years it seems that those collective spaces have become less and less and less aimed at the community; after all, it is like this everywhere, it is repeated to us almost as a sort of justification which however has no comfort in everyday life. It may also be true, but it seems that the acceleration towards the reduction of those spaces and that community is proceeding ever faster and is voraciously engulfing, leaving only an uncertain future, an ever larger part of Cremona.
The city living room cannot remain an island in the middle of a boundless expanse of water, because sooner or later that too will be eroded by time and choices, it is the very nature of a small island that sees it destined to disappear; without ideas to make it livable it will disappear like those small paradisiacal atolls but suffering according to the mood of the Ocean. The little theater of Cremona tells a story, the story of a city which, like a table set for guests, offers that need for comfortable daily life which is not only closed in that small area, but which can also be experienced in others places; in this sense the most important step is precisely that of enhancing the relationship between the community and the choices that will have to be made.
