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Rating: When can an artist be defined as such? In my opinion, the answer can only be this: when they manage to convey something to the audience. When they provoke a reaction in the spectator who finds themselves facing their work. Whether it is positive or negative doesn't matter, because the only thing that kills the artist and art as such is indifference. When someone defines art as something self-contained, they diminish its primary meaning, which is to communicate something, through its many forms, to those who come to stand before a work.
The theater presents two substantial differences from all other forms of art: life and truth. When admiring a painting, a sculpture, an architectural work, no matter how current its contents, its objectives, and its significance may be, one will always find themselves facing something inanimate, finished, or rather, completed. As strange as it may seem, cinema suffers from the same flaw. It is something that seems right there in front of us, moving, alive. But that's exactly the point: it seems alive, but it's not. Imagine going out in the morning in the garden, feeling the damp ground under your feet, the morning air caressing your face, the warm sun warming your body, and then, beyond the garden wall, admiring a beautiful and distant landscape. Cinema is just this: something that, although beautiful and fascinating, will always remain distant and unattainable. Theater, on the other hand, is the damp ground we feel under our feet, it's the morning air that caresses our face, it's the sun that warms us in the morning, it's something, in short, that, even if written years or centuries ago, comes to life right there in front of us and, although it seems to last no more than a few brief moments, will always remain as something of ours, that has been part, albeit briefly, of the life we have lived.
This is one of the lessons, at least, that I received tonight (03/23/2013) in the meeting room of the Teatro Mercadante in Naples. The environment is elegant, the air calm. The three actors arrive, three exceptional interpreters of the Italian scene: Alessio Boni, Alessandro Haber, and Gigio Alberti. The show is one of the most staged of the last twenty years: "Art", by Yasmina Reza.
The plot: Serge, a wealthy Parisian dermatologist, buys for an exorbitant sum a completely white canvas by the master Antrios. Two friends, Yvan and Marc, try to make him understand that there is nothing represented on it, but he keeps saying he sees an abstract masterpiece made of changing lines, which are nothing more than the textures of the canvas. From this starting point begins a conversation about the meaning of contemporary art that, sometimes with more heated tones, sometimes with humor, sometimes with irony, will lead the three to review their doubts and certainties until a surprising finale.
Tonight the three, through the explanation of the approach to their respective characters (Boni-Serge, Haber-Yvan, Alberti-Marc), introduced us to the different levels of interpretation that the script presents: the discussion on stage is actually no more than a pretext to bring the spectator to interact with themselves, bringing to light, as the three do, their own doubts, fears, certainties, values, emotions, feelings, etc...
I believe that the three actors I met tonight intended to say that the strength of their show and of theatrical performances in general is that of being always the same and always different at the same time; capable of always preserving their identity, from the first to the two hundredth performance, but always offering something new, unexpected, unforeseen; whether it's a sensation, an emotion, a thought.
In conclusion, this is precisely what makes theater so special: the possibility of attending a performance without any particular expectations and being able to leave with the awareness of having been, even if for a short time, part of something unique and unforgettable.
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