Tribute Evening for Emanuele Banterle
A te come te
by Giovanni Testori
“scenic reading” from an idea by Gabriele Allevi and Luca Doninelli
voice: Ermanno Montanari; singing: Michela Marangoni and Laura Redaelli; direction: Marco Martinelli
Co-production Teatro delle Albe – Ravenna Teatro, deSidera Festival, in collaboration with Bergamo Candidate for European Capital of Culture 2019;
Performance: July 12, 9:30 PM; Novate Milanese, Casa Testori
The great writer Giovanni Testori (Novate 1923 – Milan 1993) never made distinctions between his theatrical work, his critical writing, poetry, fiction, or journalism. The essential character of his words is always the same: his is a shouting word, a word meant from the start to be embodied by a voice, a body, a flesh. It is no coincidence that all his work has ended up on the theater stage—a bare, essential, humble, yet sacred place where words merge with matter itself, hurled at the audience like a plea for help or for mercy.
Twenty years after his death and ninety years after his birth, the great actress Ermanna Montanari, supported by Marco Martinelli (her playwright, director, and husband), breaks another taboo with this performance, bringing Testori the journalist to the stage through a selection of his most memorable writings on current events. Dramatic stories, often desperate circumstances, are illuminated by the writer’s compassionate yet razor-sharp eye, revealing, at the heart of tragedy, signs of Hope that even the most terrible injustice cannot entirely extinguish.
