CINEMA CIELO
by Danio Manfredini
CINEMA CIELO
SKY CINEMA
conceived and directed by Danio Manfredini
with Patrizia Aroldi, Vincenzo Del Prete, Danio Manfredini, Giuseppe Semeraro
assistant to the director Patrizia Aroldi
lights Maurizio Viani
soundtrack realization Marco Olivieri
lights and sound technician Davide Cavandoli
stagehand Giulio Bonini
production Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Festival Santarcangelo dei Teatri
From Jean Genet’s novel Our Lady of the Flowers, born Cinema Cielo.
Three literary boards are translated on a theatrical stage:
 a narrator
 a context
 a story.
The narrator Genet melts in the character of the transvestite Samira.
The prison context in the Forties, becomes a red-light cinema in the end of Twentieth
century.
Divine and her lovers, main characters in the novel, became the actors of a porno film.
The shadows that live in Cinema Cielo make resurface the Genet’s shadows and world.
On November 2004, with Cinema Cielo, Danio Manfredini won Ubu Prize for the best
Italian direction.
Once upon a time in Milan there was the Cinema Cielo, a red-light movie house which is
now closed.
Danio Manfredini's show, which is based on this place, takes a magnifying glass and looks
at a form of humanity for whom sex is a need, a form of escape, a merchandise, the
desire for company, the phantasm of love. The public's gaze is directed at the auditorium
and the spectator spies on those who inhabit the shadows. Meanwhile the soundtrack
which runs is freely adapted from a novel by Jean Genet and tells the story of Louise,
commonly known as la Divina, and her many lovers, and of Our Lady of the Flowers, a
seductive murderess.
By transforming Genet's work into a sound score presented in tableaux, and then
interweaving it with the life of a red-light cinema, Manfredini has invented a new form
which is able to accommodate the complexity of the novel which he then anchors in the
contemporary world. The universe of the penitentiary becomes the dark world of the
cinema, a metaphor of alienation, and poses a challenge to our common morality, while
the non-naturalistic acting style evokes the poetic depth of Genet's work, which is
preserved within the resonance of the text.
The show derives its vigour from the meeting of two worlds which belong one to the
other, joined by an indissoluble bond. The shadows that haunt the Cinema Cielo conjure
up Genet's twilight world. "Our Lady of the Flowers" unwinds in sound frames which are
heard one after the other, and the film becomes the soundtrack for the various encounters
which take place in the auditorium. We see nothing of the film apart from the odd glare of
light, but we can work out the sequences, the facts being simple enough. The first part of
the film deals with love, the second with death; the characters meet with their destinies.
In the first part the actors are introduced, they enter and exit in their various guises, they
populate the place with their presence and are fleshed out in the second part, revealing
depths of human intimacy.
From a conversation with Danio Manfredini
Over a year of work and rehearsals in which he wonders what role Genet and his novel
should have on the stage. “Our Lady of the Flowers", explains Danio, "is set in the Forties,
but I am not interested in a recreation of history and atmosphere. What interests me is
the here and now."
In this way Genet and his poetry - but stripped of any intellectual or literary pretense - are
translated on the stage.
Cinema Cielo, in Milan, is one of those red-light cinemas which prospered between the
years of sexual liberation and the advent of the videocassette. "It's been closed for years,
they are pulling it down. People from all walks of life went there: the married man, the
gay man who wanted sex, the transsexual prostitute in search of customers, the curious
teenager, the whore, maybe a couple with kinky tastes."
To begin with there was a welter of notes, suggestions, worlds and ideas. Danio
Manfredini's work is not the work of a playwright who writes a text and then stages it.
There is never a text as such to perform (nor a score of choreographed movements), a
script to act out, but rather material and notes to place in order after being tried out,
forged and honed on the stage. After finding their truth in the dramatic action, in the
gesture.
So here we have Danio trying out his Cinema Cielo with three fellow explorers.
The route we take can never be straightforward. The solutions are never easy to find
because they have to appear necessary. "In this way there are two very different notional
scripts: the one we started from and the one we arrived at after a year of work in the
rehearsal room. The film and the auditorium are two worlds which cross-reference each
other. They run autonomously, independently, but then you realize that the words spoken
in the film are connected with what is happening in the auditorium".
Genet's world is a very complex, as is Danio's, dense with influences, allusions and
personal obsessions which are woven into a complex and articulated language. The
meeting of these worlds produces a sense of new complexity and stratification.
Danio's objective remains that of simplicity, without ever running the risk of simplification.
Popularity, without ever looking for easy applause. His is a quest for immediacy of
communication and understanding which has no need of cultural tools to be decoded.
Because it is a language based on the fundamental elements of our being in the world:
the body and its relationship with space, gesture as immediate expression, feelings - love
and loss. That's why when this artist says "I am looking for simplicity, popularity", he is
simply telling the truth.
Danio Manfredini - Bio
In the course of almost a decade, Danio Manfredini has produced rare and precious
performances, often one-man shows based on pitiless introspection and executed with
obsessive perfectionism in a complex and refined stage language which has great
effectiveness in its communicative impact.
He is a luminous exception on the Italian theatre scene. His artistic development is
somewhat eccentric: his productions are not merely successful (or otherwise), but living
organisms which come into being, grow and then - perhaps - die when their author senses
that their driving energy is exhausted, or has moved in another direction and has need of
a new form. His is not just theatre, or rather the discovery - almost "the miracle" - of one
possible form of theatre. It is painting, because in its minimal and ineluctable gestures
both the hand that makes the sign and the sign itself are condensed. It is dance in the
rhythm and concatenation of its movements, in its use of space. It is poetry in its
reflection on the themes of extraneousness and "otherness", which is perhaps the
common thread running through his development: he has concealed his suffering, making
no concessions to sentimentalism and banality.
He rarely offers his performances to the public because they are journeys in love and pain,
excavated from within the self and in the quest he is conducting in search of the other. To
expose them to the corrosive effects of routine repeat performances and touring would be
a needless waste, almost an outrage.
If you talk with many of the leading players and aficionados of new Italian theatre you will
discover that Danio is a secret master who, in his seminars, has left a lasting mark on
numerous artistic careers: with his rigor, his experience, his wisdom, and obviously his
professional competence acquired through years of rehearsals, improvisations and
recombinations of theatrical subjects.
But it is above all his integrity as an artist which offers an example and compass bearing
to us all.
Oliviero Ponte di Pino
From the catalogue of Festival Santarcangelo dei Teatri 2003
CINEMA CIELO on tour
Italy:
Rimini, Festival Santarcangelo dei Teatri, Teatro degli Atti, 5 -12 July 2003
Pontedera, Generazioni Festival, Capannone ex Ape, 11 - 12 October 2003
Roma, Le vie dei festival, Teatro India, 5 - 9 November 2003
Modena, Le vie dei festival, Teatro delle Passioni, 29 October - 1 November 2003
Milano, Teatro dell’Elfo, 3 - 15 February 2004
Prato, Teatro Fabbricone, 27 - 29 February 2004
Bari, Teatro Kismet, 6 - 7 March 2004
Mestre, Teatro Toniolo, 22 January 2005
Bologna, Festival Gender Bender, Sala Pasolini, 3 - 4 November 2005
Castiglioncello (Li), Teatro Castello Pasquini, 18 February 2006
Napoli, Teatro Mercadante, 21 - 26 February 2006
Milano, Teatro dell’Elfo, 28 February - 19 March 2006
foreign countries:
Quimper, Festival Mettre en Scène, Théậtre de Cornouaille, 5 – 6 November 2004
Rennes, Festival Mettre en Scène, Théậtre Aire Libre – Saint Jacques de la Lande, 9 - 13
November 2004
Caen (Francia), Centre Dramatique National de Normandie, Théậtre 32, 16 - 18 March
2005
Montréal (Québec – Canada), Festival de Théậtre des Amériques, Monument National Salle
Ludger-Duvernay, 26 - 28 May 2005
São Paulo (Brasile), Festival “Mostra SESC de Artes 2005”, Teatro Sesc Belenzinho, 26 - 28
August 2005
Creteil (Francia), Maison des Arts, 19 - 21 October 2005
CONTACTS:
Barbara Regondi
Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione
Largo Garibaldi 15, 41100 Modena – Italy
Ph.: +39.059.2136044, fax: +39. 059. 234979
e-mail: bregondi@emiliaromagnateatro.com
www.emiliaromagnateatro.com