Giocando con Orlando

STEFANO ACCORSI    MARCO BALIANI

in

GIOCANDO CON ORLANDO
freely adapted fromOrlando Furioso di Ludovico Ariosto

set design

MIMMO PALADINO

impianto scenico

DANIELE SPISA

costumes

ALESSANDRO LAI

lighting design

LUCA BARBATI

adattamento teatrale e directed by
MARCO BALIANI

The show premiered at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence on 19 November 2013. Stefano Accorsi and Marco Baliani, together again to play with Ariosto's verse – a Nuovo Teatro production.

Actor, director and playwright Marco Baliani has turned the 38,746 lines of Orlando Furioso – its ladies, knights, arms and loves – into Giocando con Orlando, an original ballad in Ariostean rhyme and a singular joust for the stage, fought hand to hand, rhyme after rhyme, with Stefano Accorsi.

Coincidences, opportunities and accidents gave rise to this theatrical adventure, which builds on the success of Furioso Orlando and answers the need and the renewed challenge to explore the text in an even more radical direction, where the sublime art of the jester and of improvisation makes the bodies on stage resonate, crossed by rhymes, lines, sounds and noises, turning them into one and all of the characters, and into the monsters and magical creatures of the famous poem. “How did Giocando con Orlando come about? By a quirk of fate. I was in Asti,” Baliani recalls, “directing the summer season of Furioso Orlando, but that day the actress – Nina Savary – couldn't catch her plane and the sets didn't leave Naples. There were over eight hundred bookings; the producer Marco Balsamo and the organisers were desperate. Stefano Accorsi and I sat down at a table and went on stage just like that, without costumes or lights, improvising. I didn't know the text by heart, so I played the female parts and made all the sound effects with my voice. That's where the idea of a new production came from, with just the two of us on stage, going back a little to the fundamentalism of my Kohlhaas. It was a new experiment, a new stage in our work.” In Giocando con Orlando Stefano Accorsi still plays the paladin Orlando, but he is also the bard who links the various episodes in the flow of the story; Marco Baliani is a fool, a director on stage, ready to be stooge and supporting player, to set traps and invent stanzas. The show always starts from the two main love stories – the paladin Orlando pursuing the beautiful Angelica, and the Christian warrior Bradamante in love with Ruggiero, a Saracen knight destined to convert – then multiplies the characters, creating others around them, monsters included, playing on rhymes strung together at a galloping pace, with much verbal improvisation, rhymes hard to find and gestures hard to perform.

Mimmo Paladino, with his famous horses, creates the carousel for the duels, loves, clashes and meetings of the knights who appear and disappear in the round dance the game demands. Within a set by Daniele Spisa, Alessandro Lai's costumes move in Luca Barbati's lighting design.

 

Director's notes

But what has Baliani got to do with Accorsi?

Tutt’e due on stage, due attori così diversi?

What happened? Furioso Orlando, with Stefano Accorsi and Nina Savary, toured extensively and had the merit of helping thousands of spectators rediscover Ariosto's immense work. Then, with a little help from chance, a second version was born: I realised that what we had done until then was an interesting discovery, but that more could be done. As I followed Nina Savary and Stefano Accorsi's development and saw the theatrical power of repertoire – of repetition that generates new ideas – I tried to imagine Ludovico Ariosto declaiming his poem. But did he declaim it? How did he tell the stories – was there music, did he play it himself, was he alone? How did he come up with the scene changes, dropping one thread to seek a new episode, picking up a hero forgotten a few cantos earlier? How did he decide to shorten, cut and stitch back together – did he pay attention to his audience's reactions, did he rehearse before getting to work?

Is this nonsense? Perhaps it is, but as an artist I have to imagine a body on stage speaking words, so why not try to make the poem even more jester-like, a relative of that other theatre that took place just outside those courts, in the same squares, perhaps with strolling players who recited the same episodes from memory, only more crudely?

So I wanted to try to explore the text in an even more radical direction.

The game of theatre within theatre is as old as the world; the art lies in steering it in a precarious balance, in measure, without ever damaging the poetry of the poem, without mocking the characters, without distance, but with all the loving compassion of strolling players who love their creatures because they identify with them.

In questa nuova versione by Giocando with Orlando c’è molta fisicità, senza scene, senza illustrazioni by alcun tipo, ogni gesto, parola, suono, musica, temporale, vento e accidenti vari viene emesso da quei nostri due corpi affannati e saltellanti.

The centre is still the theme of love – returned or not, violent or not, betrayed or not – with the two couples, Orlando and Angelica, Bradamante and Ruggiero, and the two of us going in and out of the characters, creating others around them, monsters included, playing precisely on rhymes strung together at a galloping pace, with much verbal improvisation, rhymes hard to find and gestures hard to perform.

Leaping across space and time with a simple play of light, or an extra jump onto a raised platform. Stefano is the bard who links the episodes in a more continuous flow; I am a fool, directing on stage, becoming stooge and supporting player, setting traps and inventing stanzas. But thanks to this game, this playful theatrical joy, at times the whole passion of love appears, distilled and made heartbreaking; the strength of friendship, in a moment of moved brotherhood; the fury of jealousy in a destructive exercise. Giocando con Orlando will surprise the audience who, after being led to the playing field, the carousel and the Hellzapoppin-style chaos, will suddenly find themselves facing something ancient: feelings. They will have just enough time to feel them and experience something like nostalgia, before being swept back onto the roller coaster of the flying Hippogriff or the roaring Orc.

Marco Baliani

Articoli

Il Mattino – Napoli

Corriere Romagna

il Resto del Carlino

La Nazione – Lucca

Photographs are free of publication rights for press use. Please always credit the photographer: ph. Alessandro Moggi

DOWNLOAD THE PHOTOS

  Failed to get data. Error:
Request had insufficient authentication scopes.