A man tries to get on stage and realize his lifelong dream: meeting a well-known theater manager to get to know him and convince him to get hired. On a day of nervous quiet, a short break from the bombings during the Second World War, in the back of a small provincial theater, is staged.”The war ruined me” with Arianna Gambaccini And Michele Cipriani, text and direction by Arianna Gambaccini, a co-production between Coop. Crest of Taranto and Compagnia Malalingua, with the support of Trac – Apulian artistic residency center – project 2022, which will debut on Saturday 29 June at 9pm and Sunday 30 June at 8pm at the Cittadella degli Artisti in Molfetta, as part of the festival Contemporary Plots (artistic direction by Marianna de Pinto and Marco Grossi).
“The war ruined me” is the story of the parallel lives of the artists of yesterday and today. It is the story of two souls struggling with two different wars who share the same “trauma”: emptiness and “failure” (or what they believe to be such). It is a tribute to the world of vaudeville, which was able to transform suffering and hunger into collective, popular and liberating laughter. It is a story that speaks of the actor’s hunger, of stage cholera and of the universal need of others.
A show that draws on the family history of Michele Cipriani, nephew of the vaudeville actor of the same name between the 30s and 40s of the last century, written by the Company of Comedian Arturo Vetrani’s Magazine, in which he found himself sharing the stage with the Maggio brothers, Pietro de Vico and many others.
“Someone says that our destiny is in our name, I don’t know if it’s true. What I know is that there are three things that link me to my progenitor: the profession, the name (even if he called himself “Mario Ceprani” on stage) and in some way the war. He was starting to make a name for himself when Italy entered the war in 1940. Having moved to Taranto before the conflict, he was convinced by the city’s fire marshal to join the fire brigade. I don’t know how aware he was at that moment that his career would end there: his career ended, with a show interrupted by the bombings.
It was put in “forty” as happened to everyone in 2020: we have in common the suspension in which our lives found themselves. In our profession we are used to fighting to survive the shortage of work. But how do you fight a bombardment, whether it comes from above or from a small particle in our breath? What can art do against something immensely large or immensely small that strikes us? Beyond material conditions, what can an actor nourish himself with when the contingencies of life take away what he needs most: the audience? Who am I without you watching me? Who are we all without others? Which war really ruins us: the one outside or the one inside us?
Michele Cipriani graduated in 2000 from the P. Grassi Civic School of Dramatic Art. In 2008 he began his collaboration with the Kismet Theater with which he staged numerous shows directed by Teresa Ludovico. From 2014 to 2017 he starred in “King Lear”, “To the light”, “Doing nothing” produced by the Teatro Era, directed by Roberto Bacci, the last two with the dramaturgy of Michele Santeramo. He participates as an actor in various theater productions for various national companies. In 2020 he co-stars in the film “The Revenge” directed by Leo Muscato. In 2021 he is part of the cast of Murder Theatre Reading by Malalingua Teatro, a Teatri di Bari production and is co-star of the show Fiabe nei Castelli by Michele Santeramo, a Rex Exstensa production. In 2022 he takes part in the revival of the show “Le Moliere imagineire” by Teresa Ludovico, (taken from Moliere) and “Broken lives” again directed by Teresa Ludovico.
Arianna Gambaccini trained following the path of Graziano Giusti’s theater school, working with Al Yamanuci and Corrado Veneziano; and participating in the course for Actors of the Cust of Urbino. She then follows theater workshops with Michele Santeramo, Leo Muscato, Michele Sinisi, Gualtiero De Santi, Gilberto Santini, Maria Cassi, Lino Musella and Paolo Mazzarelli. In recent years you have participated in various productions including “Broken lives” of the Kismet Opera Theater, “Butterflies” by Animalenta Teatro, “Alone against the mafia” of the Hermitage Theatre, shows with which he is still currently on stage. He writes and directs “Some days” And “Ariadne in the labyrinth”, “freedom with wings on the a”; with “Black in August, a monologue in rhyme”, was a finalist for the Dostoevsky Prize. In 2017 she is the protagonist of the short film “The day”, by Pippo Mezzapesa. With Saba Salvemini and Annika Strøhm of AretéEnsamble, Cipriani Gambaccini happily produces and stages the show “The God of Slaughter” which debuted in 2022 at the Kismet Theater.
