The protagonist of the day is certainly our great Mario Pirovano. After a first day of presentations and stories about his personal experience, today Mario takes us to the theatre, a natural theatre immersed in an extremely uncontaminated area of nature (as you can see from the photos!) and for us alone, he acts out two monologues by Dario Fo: “La fame dello Zanni” (The hunger of Zanni) and “Il miracolo di Lazzaro” (The miracle of Lazarus).

It is all done in a new language, a mix of dialects from northern Italy, Portuguese, Italian, Grammelot.

I swear that I clearly heard some Veneto dialect words!!! For two hours Mario spoke this mix of tongues with unbelievable naturalness, and from the questions asked by the Mozambique group it was clear that they could understand and were following the thread of the conversation.

I saw them laugh, bounce in their seats when Mario increased the rhythm, some followed Mario’s body movements with their heads, at some moments it seemed like a dance.

The power of theatre, body, gestures!

Pure magic.

The magic increases when Mario talks about his personal experience as an actor. He went on stage for the first time as a solo actor when he was over 40. Before that, he was the assistant of Dario Fo and Franca Rame. He talks about having done everything: from ironing stage clothes to assembling the set design. He followed all the performances of Dario and Franca, listened to them, then one day, in front of a group of children who were cursing as they spoke about football, he discovered that he was an actor!

Instead of scolding the children because of their language, Mario recited a text by Dario on the child Jesus. It was a story taken from the Apocrypha Gospels, so not told in the official Gospels (those by Matthew, Mark and Luke).

Mario had absorbed Dario and Franca’s theatre through “osmosis” and that day saw the start of his successful career in Italy and the world!

The Mozambique group are perturbed, the concept of “osmosis” is not clear… 🙂

They ask Mario if he took lessons, went to acting school. Mario answers no, it’s just passion and a natural talent for gestures.

Tomorrow, says Mario, we will do exercises on movement, mimicry, body language.

* * *

Pizza and a short tourist visit to Gubbio.

Going through the streets of Gubbio, probably the most beautiful Medieval city in Italy, I see that Adelino senior is looking around, astonished.

I ask him what he is thinking. “I was looking at the houses, they’re all made of stone!”