COMUNICAZIONI SOCIALI - 2008 - 2. Ricerche dall'archivio storico del Piccolo Teatro (1947-1963)

«Le théâtre est toujours vivant et le sera toujours», wrote Jean Vilar in Le théâtre, service public, a sentence recalling a theory, a hope, an imperative. Such a remark becomes daring if, going beyond the theatre institution itself, we face the problem of the transmission of memories. This is a thought recalling Elio Lodolini’s suggestions on the difficulty of handing down the memories through elements which were not thought to be handed down as testimonies or memories. In recent years, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano – European Theatre, repository of an archive of utmost importance for the history of arts and for culture, has been pursuing an important campaign of valorization of its memories. It is challenge which, if achieved, will highlight new aspects and new secrets of the history of arts and of the Italian and European theatre.

The article offers a contribution to the history of the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro, starting from the documents (many of which still unpublished) kept at the Historical Archive of the theatre. Various aspects, organizational, cultural, even political, characterizing the origins of the first Italian stable theatre are taken into consideration. A particular attention is dedicated to Mario Apollonio, among the founders of the Piccolo Teatro, often forgotten in the previous historiographic reconstructions. The contribution proposes itself as a first (and obviously partial) recognition of the issues related to the foundation of the Piccolo Teatro. It is seen as part of a long process, the result of which is the raise of consciousness of the necessity of a new theatre culture, though situated (and partly justified) within preexisting structures. The objective is meant to give some notes aimed at the beginning of a wider research with the ambitious and difficult objective to briefly reconstruct the history of a complicated institutional path, aimed at bringing new dignity to the work of theatre in Italy, and underlining not only the discontinuities with what happened before, but also the persistencies and continuities.

During the Season 1953/1954, the first show for children and young people was staged at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan: it was an adaptation of Il corvo by Carlo Gozzi, directed by Giorgio Strehler. During the following Season, another show for children was staged and broadcasted on RAI television: Qui comincia la sventura del signor Bonaventura, by Sergio Tofano. The direction was entrusted to Checco Rissone. It was one of the six comedies with which Tofano, one of the best-known theatre authors for children, brings on stage the famous protagonist of the comics he used to draw for the «Corriere dei Piccoli». The main objective of the two shows was to initiate children and young people in the experience of theatre: young people are the audience of future and the management of the Piccolo Teatro believed it was very important to let them approach the art of the stage since their infancy. For this reason, the two shows represented a change if compared with the widest part of the theatre production for children up to that moment: they do not have, in fact, a pedagogic aim from the point of view of contents; they do not aim at morally edifying their audience. Their aim is to contribute to the creation, through a show of high artistic level, of taste and sensibility in the young spectators.

In 1957, the Ente Autonomo Piccolo Teatro was founded, ten years after the foundation of the theatre in Milan, and it started a new phase in its life. In the following years, until 1960, Paolo Grassi and Giorgio Strehler were busy in the hypothesis and drafting of a bill for the theatre of prose. Many protagonists of the world of theatre were involved in the debate: critics, directors, actors, all committed in re-thinking the Italian theatre horizon as included, at last, in a precise regulation. So, in 1959, the newly formed Ministero del Turismo e Spettacolo summoned an appropriate commission to discuss a bill regulating censorship, funding, and interventions of the Government in the production of the theatre, and in the choice of the repertoire. The aim of this study is to reenact the debates of those years through the relationships between Paolo Grassi and the other protagonists of the world of theatre, all involved in a new project. In this context Eduardo De Filippo and Vittorio Gassman emerged as constant interlocutors of the Piccolo Teatro, in a dense network of reciprocal artistic exchanges, common projects, co-produced shows, shared or discussed ideas.

This article reconstructs, through the documents filed in the Historical Archive of the Piccolo Teatro, the controversy which involved the theatrical institution during the staging of Vita di Galileo in april 1963. Part of the catholic world of Milan considered the performance offensive for the religious sensibility and judged the artistic and cultural orientation of the Piccolo Teatro as unsuitable to its role of public service. Criticisms and pressures pushed Grassi and Strehler to introduce some modifications in the most discussed scenes of the show and in the program of 1962/1963 Season. The idea that a theatre managed by the public administration should respect a cultural pluralism seems, in the context of the debate, to stand against the principle of autonomy of the artistic expression. The conflict between opposed opinions shows the difficulty in balancing pluralism and autonomy in a model in which the role of the public theatre is entrusted, in the city, to a single theatre body.

Lettere di/a Paolo Grassi intorno alla messinscena di «Vita di Galileo».