Napoli Teatro Festival Italia 2009

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on NAPOLI TEATRO FESTIVAL ITALIA 2009 for Scotsman Review, 9.1.09
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IF THER’S ONE THING Europe doesn’t lack, at the turn of this crisis-ridden year, it’s an impressive roster of great cities seeking to make culture a corner-stone of their future development.   From Liverpool and Stavanger to Vilnius and Linz, the map seems full of cities seeking to win the kind of reputation Edinburgh has enjoyed for  the last 60 years, since the founding of the International Festival; and just this week, the UK government announced a new four-yearly competition to designate a British Capital of Culture, as way of promoting cultural investment as a key to future success.

Of all the cities treading the path towards cultural development, though, none faces a tougher journey than Naples, which emerged two years ago as the winner of a nationwide competition to stage Italy’s new international theatre festival, and is now preparing the second edition of its Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, which takes place in June.  This summer, Scottish companies will feature strongly in the Napoli programme, with Andy Arnold of the Tron Theatre directing the first theatre production ever staged in Naples’s amazing underground city of ancient stone aquifers and water-tanks, and Matthew Lenton of Vanishing Point – in association with the Traverse – creating a new British-Italian production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s Interiors, a moody reflection on knowledge, and the withholding of knowledge, as part of the dynamic of power and spectacle.

But as the Festival’s director Renato Quaglia acknowledges, the birth of the Festival has not been easy, and Naples still struggles to shift its persistent image as a city of crime, corruption, and civic chaos.   “In the months when we were preparing the first Festival,” Quaglia explains, “we had the terrible Naples rubbish crisis, which was the only thing anyone could hear about the city, all over the world.  We had a national financial crisis, and a round of very severe spending-cuts in the arts, which made everyone very nervous.

“Then we had the publication of Roberto Saviano’s book Gomorrah, about crime and corrupion in Naples, and the release of the film version of it.  And finally we had a change of national government, from the centre-left administration which had promoted the idea of the Festival, to the latest government of Silvio Berlusconi – although in fact they continued to support us.  So it was a very difficult time; but in the end, we attracted an audience of 40,000 people, which we felt was a good start.”

The Naples Festival has a long way to go, in other words, before it can attract the audience of around 500,000 routinely clocked up by the official Edinburgh Festival, or accumulate some real earned income to match its 6 million euros in grants, mainly from the strongly supportive regional government of Campania.  Quaglia and his boss Rachele Furfaro – who chairs the Festival Foundation – use only the most diplomatic language in describing their battle to get the Festival off the ground.   But it’s clear from their emphasis on creating a Festival organisation with a young, committed staff, and a modern, transparent and efficient way of working, that they are trying to create not only a powerful international artistic event which will generate major new work each year, but a new model of Italian arts organisation, which moves away from what Quaglia – who left his previous post as a senior  director of the Venice Biennale because of political pressure on the organisation – calls “the old rules and structures of 1945.”

If the Naples Festival faces unique challenges, though, it also has a rare and thrilling opportunity to start disentangling and re-examining all the magnificent stories that make up the fabric of life in a city which has always belonged as much to the Mediterranean and the world as to Italy; Rachele Furfaro calls Quaglia a kind of “reverse Penelope”, unweaving and celebrating all the strands of the city’s story, and opening up its previously hidden physical spaces.  So Andy Arnold’s project, known simply as La Sotteranea, will seek to evoke the atmosphere of underground Naples during the Second World War, when the ancient water supply network was used as a giant air-raid shelter.

“When I got down there,” says Arnold, “I was just completely struck by the quality of those spaces, with this beautiful cool, clear air filtered through the volcanic rock, and by the idea that while hell and carnage was being unleashed up at ground level, down there people were giving birth and getting married – all the beautiful things of life were going on.  I think Glasgow and Naples have a lot in common – the rich seaport culture, the bad reputation for crime and gang warfare, the wartime experience of bombing and deprivation, and the human stories surrounding that.  And I’m hoping to develop that link by working with some actors who come from Glasgow Italian families with links to the Naples area.  That bond is part of the story of both cities, and it shouldn’t be forgotten.”

And although Matthew Lenton’s Maeterlinck project will be staged in a more conventional space – the little Sannazaro cafe theatre in the main shopping street – he too has been eyeing up some fabulous found spaces amid the grand and crumbling historic fabric of Naples.  “I’ve been really impressed by this Festival,” says Lenton, “by their ideas, their organisation, their sense of purpose, and their williingness to think outside the box.  I think Renato Quaglia is raising really important questions about what “international” work really means today, whether it just means bringing together artists from different cultures, or whether you can achieve something deeper than that, some sustained creative projects that cross national and language boundaries.  I think he’s the real deal; and he’s so passionate about his project, here in Naples, that I think he’s going to make it work.”

Interiors at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 3-11 April, on tour to Stirling, Aberdeen, London and Glasgow, and at the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, Naples 8-14 June; La Sotteranea in Naples, 8-21 June.

ENDS ENDS

~ by joycemcmillan on January 9, 2009.