Two Men. Roncalli and Montini stand the test of time is the new reading show that Luca Doninelli, writer and director of the Teatro Oscar deSidera in Milan, has created for Massimo Popolizio, on stage tomorrow 19 December. Already experimented with crucial historical figures – Mussolini the last, in the theatrical adaptation of Scurati’s text – this time Popolizio brings to life the voices of the complex and multifaceted personalities who changed the face of the Church and Italian history in the last century: Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. Two portraits that unfold over different chapters, interspersed with the music of the cellist Giovanna Famulari, to tell the story of the men, before the characters, in an emotional journey through the most complex decades of Italian history.
We interviewed Popolizio to tell us how they constructed the reading.
There reading deals with complex figures such as Roncalli and Montini, two very different men but united by the weight of history. How did you work to restore their humanity and, at the same time, the historical context in which they acted?
«It is a text by Luca Doninelli that tells the story of Pope John and Pope Montini. Their diversity, their difficulty in the time in which they lived, their being innovators. Far from the cliché of the good pope, Doninelli says that Pope John was rather determined to change a certain type of structure through the Vatican Council, which he strongly wanted and which however he was unable to complete in his idea of a different church. And in the same way Montini, in a different era, troubled by wars, the Red Brigades, his friendship with Moro, the famous letter to Corriere della Sera. In one hour we try not to summarize the story, but to tell a cross-section from Luca Doninelli’s point of view. I try to make people see images with words. My words contextualize the story. I try to show the situations that are described, to take long shots, as if I were telling a film.”
How does the music integrate with your interpretation?
«Music is thought of as a musical breath. I don’t believe so much in the mix between music and words. It is rather a moment to breathe after so many words, because they are 41 pages of text, read while standing still on the stage, without scenography, without changing the lights. Listening to an actor who speaks, even in an impassioned, very passionate way, like I do, requires a minimum of breathing space. Also because the text is divided into chapters, and precisely to give each one a meaning, there is a musical space between one and the other”.
How do the figures of the two popes emerge?
«What are portrayed are above all two human figures. The text is in first person. Luke tells the story of two popes, or rather of two men, of two great men who were witnesses of the time. It is therefore the author himself who tells the story in the first person, starting from his own conception of time: it is the grandmother who peeled the beans and seeing them increase in the bowl was for him the sense of time passing. It’s a personal story. It’s also the story of his mother who had a medallion with three important people, Kennedy, Pope John and I think there was Stalin on the other side. An absurd triad which however gives the idea of that era, of how much the hope of that time was worth. It is therefore the emotional story of the post-war period, of what the idea of the future, of construction, meant for everyone, things that today also make a bit of an impression given that there is no idea of the future.”
Is there a passage, a particularly significant phrase?
«The two popes are witnesses of time, but you have to stay in time. Instead, we normally run away from time. To change things you have to stay in time and you have to invest it emotionally, otherwise you can’t change.”
