TINO CASPANELLO
Tino Caspanello is a playwright, novelist, scenographer, actor, and director from Messina, Sicily, as well as the founder of the Pubblico Incanto Theater Company. His works for theater — now more than twenty — have been translated into English, French, Polish, Albanian, Greek, and Turkish and have been performed widely in Europe and internationally. They have been presented in Marseilles, Lyon, Toulouse, and Strasbourg; in Paris at the Théâtre de l’Atelier; at the Avignon Off Festival by La Compagnie La Lune Blanche; at the Troisième Bureau of Grenoble as part of the Festival Regards Croisés; in Athens at the 2nd Focus of Contemporary Theatre, held at the Institut Français d’Athènes; in Cieszyn, Poland, at the Border Festival; and at the University of Hong Kong under the auspices of the University of Chicago. Caspanello is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the Special Prize of the Jury of Premio Riccione Teatro for The Sea (2003); the playwright’s prize from Italy’s National Association of Theatre Critics (2008); the Eurodram Prize for Pictures from a Revolution from the Italian Committee of the Maison d’Europe et d’Orient in Paris; Special Mention for Bounds at Migration Harbour Europe in London (2018); and the Palmarès Eurodram for the Albanian translation of The Sea (2019). His work has been published in Italy, France, Turkey, Kosovo, and now the U.S. He has served as a professor of direction and scenography in the masters’ program of Teatro Euro-Mediterraneo at the University of Messina (2008); as a professor of playwriting in the masters’ “Animas” program, Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo (2011 and 2012); as a professor of playwriting at DAMS, University of Messina (2012, 2017, 2018); and as a professor of the theory and technique of scenography at DAMS, University of Messina (2016).
Stéphane Resche: Dear Tino, your text Orli/Bounds (2017), begins with the “ballad of the chair.” For a few weeks, the coronavirus has forced us all to stay at home, still, seated. Or not. What should we do with these chairs? Is it time to change the world?
Tino Caspanello: While writing Orli/Bounds, I was thinking of a group of people, different from each other by culture and ethnicity, forced to live together in a closed place. I asked myself several questions: What happens? What do they do during the day? What are their behaviors? What survival and coexistence strategies can they implement? The dynamics of the play led me to trigger conflicts, to generate factions, but above all it made me reflect on the possibilities that could arise during forced coexistence, and immediately two feelings came to me – tolerance and affection – which could direct the play towards the only possible solution, that is, to remain human despite everything, despite the rules, laws, prohibitions, accidents . . . I think that affection is a motive for salvation because it contains mercy, tolerance, lucidity towards events and also the critical ability to not fall victim to too much information and other viruses that circulate freely in the world.
The staff of L’Armadillo Furioso: What is your theatrical mission?
Tino Caspanello: I just try to give voice to my times, nothing else. I try to find a way to do it with the object of shedding light, of lighting glimmers of conscience, inside me and outside me.