It is an unspecified hour of the day or night and the transvestite Divine walks back and forth on the sidewalk of a suburban street, telling his story in a tender and ironic soliloquy. On his shoulders he wears a bright pair of wings, as if they were to help him keep his balance on high heels, but also to facilitate his empathetic conversation with Jesus, a privileged confidant and inspirer of his mission to give love to any passerby in need. To the background of a choral sonata by Bach, the protagonist cries, is moved and exults with a shy but rapacious joy, recalling some of the most unusual episodes with his occasional lovers, almost sanctifying their prosaic nature through an imaginative and transfiguring narration.

“Cinema Cielo” by Danio Manfredini, ph Daniele Ronchi, courtesy ERT – Emilia Romagna Teatro
This is the incipit of “Cinema Cielo”, a show that debuted in 2003 at Teatro degli Atti in Rimini during the Santarcangelo dei Teatri Festival, conceived and directed by Danio Manfredini, and which the following year was awarded the Ubu Prize for best direction. The play, set in suburban Milan in the 1940s, is inspired by “Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs” (1942), the debut novel that Jean Genet wrote in prison to tell the story of a Parisian community of homosexuals on the margins of society who live by their wits, in an intersection of erotic relationships and violence. On stage Patrizia Aroldi, Vincenzo Del Prete, Danio Manfredini and Giuseppe Semeraro give life to a colorful sample of deviations from the suburbs lovingly observed in their most cynical and cruel aspects. The show, already considered a milestone of contemporary theater, was performed continuously in the years immediately following its debut and then remained away from the stage for more than fifteen years. Many other works and projects have in the meantime crossed the lives and careers of the four performers, who now find themselves engaged in a new tour (after the stages of Bari and Bologna at Arena del Sole, which we attended, there will be those of Sarzana and Milan) which demonstrates its endurance and vitality even after such a long time.

“Cinema Cielo” by Danio Manfredini, ph Daniele Ronchi, courtesy ERT – Emilia Romagna Teatro
Unlike Genet’s literary work, which emphasizes erotic vitalism and the sharpening of a magnified cruelty consubstantial to his characters, in Manfredini’s work they appear as if entangled in themselves, forever trapped in an undergrowth of weaknesses, loneliness and basic instincts. The point of view of the show, as anticipated by the opening monologue, is the hallucinatory one of Divine, who leads the spectator inside the red-light cinema from which the title is taken (evocative of a real Milanese movie theater now closed) to learn the stories and thoughts of the variegated population of misfits who spend their days there. As soon as the urban backdrop dissolves, we are faced with an embarrassing doubling, that of finding ourselves in the position of the screen of a projection room with its worn-out seats turned towards us, watching us.

“Cinema Cielo” by Danio Manfredini, ph Daniele Ronchi, courtesy ERT – Emilia Romagna Teatro
For a moment, the feeling arises that we might be directly involved, but it is only an instant, immediately silenced by the awareness that (for the moment) the characters on stage do not notice our presence because they are not watching the film, but are totally immersed in their dazed stories and their internal conversations. Together with the four actors, who alternate on stage to bring to life a polyphonic multitude of characters united by the drive to satisfy their primary needs, an equal number of mannequins, sitting on the armchairs, participate in the stage action as sidekicks, triggering duets or group scenes with them. And again, other mannequins emerge every now and then, moved by the actors, from the side doors of the imaginary service areas that surround, as in every cinema, the main room in which the invisible film is shown.

“Cinema Cielo” by Danio Manfredini, ph Daniele Ronchi, courtesy ERT – Emilia Romagna Teatro
It is always deliberately ambiguous who is doing or saying what we see and hear, because the dialogues that the actors have live with themselves or with other characters intersect with other voices coming from off-screen that contribute to expressing the needs of those on stage and those who could be there. And at the same time, at times the immobile mannequins seem to stare at us, undermining our perception of spectators at a safe distance, while the actors alternate registers of movement that cross popular theatre, puppet theatre, orgiastic choreography, mechanical ballet, passing from the unstable limping of the drunk to the elastic leap of the feline. The parallel soundtrack just mentioned, at times overwritten by music, comes from the original recording of the first performance at Sant’Arcangelo which, as Manfredini recounts in an audio conversation[1] with Michele Pascarella for Gagarin Magazine, was «dried up by compressing some scenes and removing others» to adapt it to the changed feelings of the performers, now made more disenchanted by a sort of familiarity with the material which, having become more everyday, requires a shorter time.

“Cinema Cielo” by Danio Manfredini, ph Daniele Ronchi, courtesy ERT – Emilia Romagna Teatro
And so another mirroring-doubling, this time not of role and position but chronological, with the actors almost arguing with voices made a little deeper by the experience with their past selves that have remained crystallized in the subtle dimension of sound. What remains firm, in the natural evolution of the choral composition, is Manfredini’s aptitude to erect a low and sub-ordinary dimension in poetry, emancipating it from the pettiness with which it would seem to be incurably burdened. Not therefore the apologia of vice as the reversal of acquired social values, in the manner of Genet, but an act of shared mercy that is accomplished when the audience harmonizes its own feelings (and it really happens) with those of Divine, Minion, Gorgui and the other bizarre cinema-goers. And everything is lighter, even the emotional soreness that persists after the spotlights go out.
Graduated in art history at DAMS in Bologna, city where she continued to live and work, she specialized in Siena with Enrico Crispolti. Curious and attentive to the becoming of the contemporary, she believes in the power of art to make life more interesting and she loves to explore its latest trends through dialogue with artists, curators and gallery owners. She considers writing a form of reasoning and analysis that reconstructs the connection between the artist’s creative path and the surrounding context.
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