Ottavia Piccolo is back on stage at Milan's Teatro Filodrammatici with "Buenos Aires non finisce mai". Freely inspired by Massimo Carlotto's book "Le irregolari", the show retells the drama of the desaparecidos in Argentina through Elsa's tale. She's a woman who has lost her husband during military dictatorship. "Buenos Aires non finisce mai" is directed by Silvano Piccardi, the original text was re-elaborated by Vito Biolchini and Elio Turno Arthemalle, and music is by Maurizio Camardi.Why this title, Buenos Aires never ends?
We took the title from a phrase of Carlotto's book. But it is also the title of a milonga composed by Ricky Gianco with lyrics by Carlotto, which is played during the show. And also because this phrase means that Buenos Aires still has many unresolved problems, the same that are around the world and with which we always have to deal with: violence, power abuse and war.
Who is Elsa, the woman you play?
She is a woman who lost her husband in '78. The story is invented but plausible because the desparecidos are so many (30.000) that possible stories are infinite, and all can be referred back to reality. Elsa is a woman who retraces the stages of this terrible experience of hers because currently, in Argentina, relatives of the desaparecidos can have a kind of reimbursement. The woman I play did nothing for 23 years out of fear and now she is forced to find the documents and the evidence of her husband's life and she must look around herself to see what happened then and throughout that time where the mothers and the grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo rebelled.
How did you work on your character?
I tried to tell of a woman like me, over 40, a woman whose life was destroyed by this tragedy and who slowly gains conscience of it. Obviously, luckily for me, I never had such traumatic experience sin my life, but our job is precisely made of being able to invent things we do not know about to be able to communicate them through feelings such as pain, rage, solitude. It is a show that tires me out, not just physically, but especially form an emotional and psychological point of view.
Have you ever been to Buenos Aires?
Not yet unfortunately, but I hope to able to go sooner or later. For the moment I believe that "Buenos Aires non finisce mai" is more needed here, because there are still a lot of people who don't know this piece of history. Often someone tells me: "but where was I at that time?"
Are you working on any new projects?
After this tour I will start travelling around again with the show I was doing with Gioele Dix, "Il libertino". It is a very funny and intelligent text, written by a modern French author, which speaks of Diderot, of philosophy, of morale and ethics in a very fresh way.
December.2001
Ottavia Piccolo (In Italian)
For Amnesty International
:: ITALIAN STYLE :: THEATRE ::
