Free inside: the theater told by the women of Rebibbia

This article was published in number 46 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until November 16, 2021

Daniela clears her throat and says it all in one breath. Thanks to the theater she was able to tell her two daughters that she was in prison for ten months. Detained for attempted theft. “During that time in the cell, I told them I was away on business. We could only hear each other for a few minutes on the phone, and not even every day, and I didn’t want them to experience such great suffering with this distance between us. I didn’t want them to read it through a computer screen. ‘ Once out, Daniela left the words to explain prison to her daughters to speak at the play Ramona and Juliet, which he prepared during the period of detention together with the company of the Women of the High Wall in Rebibbia, led by director Francesca Tricarico, together with the association Per Ananke. “I wanted them to understand in this way where I had been during those months and to feel free to judge me without fear. To get angry if they wanted to. They watched the show in silence and in the end they told me that I shouldn’t be ashamed, that they were proud of me. ”

Daniela is 39 years old, with blonde and wavy hair at the tips, delicate features. His eyes are downcast as he remembers those moments spent together with his girlfriends, as she calls them. She hints at a smile and opens her eyes when she repeats that they accepted everything, that they were proud of her. She arrived in Rome from Bucharest 17 years ago and she would never have imagined one day seeing herself “alone and locked up within those four walls”. This is how the period in the Rebibbia women’s prison describes it. “I wondered for days what I was doing in there, how such a thing could have happened to me.” The heart split in two, the fixed thought of her family outside, and that unnatural detachment of a mother from her daughters. When we meet her, Daniela is a free woman, she has served her detention period and is preparing for the dress rehearsal for the debut of the show at the Maxxi Auditorium in Rome (which took place last October 20, as part of the Rome Film Festival Rome). A stage of the first tour of the company of actresses, made up of former prisoners and women admitted to alternative measures to detention.

“Theater was my way to freedom”, continues Daniela, while in the rehearsal room she paces back and forth repeating her lines. “When I went on stage I felt like a free woman. Finally, in that place and at that moment I no longer had the detainee’s mark on me ». Freedom and courage are the words that Bruna, Alessandra, Annamaria, Sara, Raquel also repeat. Then Maida, Bianca, Betty, Renata, Joana, Sofia. We met them outside and inside the Rebibbia prison. In the theater they found the strength to react to detention, but also the courage to really look at themselves and discover themselves new inside. “These women pay a double blame,” repeats the director Francesca Tricarico, who has been teaching theater in the Roman prison for seven years. “That of being women and being detained. Many times I have been told that nothing is obtained from women in prison, that I would waste time. Ramona and Juliet it is the demonstration that there is only a great prejudice ». The text, rewritten by the ex-inmates themselves together with the director, comes from their personal reinterpretation of one of the most famous Shakespearean works. The occasion was the celebration, on 26 October 2017 in Rebibbia female, of the first civil union between persons of the same sex within an Italian prison. «That event had sparked the debate on homosexual love even inside the prison, just as it happened outside, in the squares. So we brought it to the stage ».

Alessandra has the full voice of someone who has so much to tell. She manages to do this by singing, and when she starts there is only room for her. On stage is Mercutia. «I play the poet of love, but I have never known the real one. It was thanks to this character that I returned the desire to believe that somewhere there is someone ready to love me too ». After almost 18 years spent inside and out, Alessandra started a new life as soon as she left. “Prison took everything away from me: my family, my loved ones, my children. I was left alone, but today I work in a foster home where there are children of all ages who need love. I do this, clean and take care of them. Life has taught me that children are not only ours: we have a lot of love and many people to whom we can give it ». Alessandra takes the words of the unforgettable Gabriella Ferri to tell the fragility of the human being. And its beauty. When he intones Otherwise I’m dying, Giulia Anania, singer-songwriter, poet and lyricist, who signs the music for the show, picks up the guitar and follows her. As in a dance that, together with the theater, enters and leaves the prison walls. Entering it is like finding yourself thrown into a bubble where you can hold your breath.

Maida, 33, tells it well in Rebibbia for eighteen months. When she arrives in the theater she is in working clothes, she distributes the shopping to the inmates. “The first thing that comes to mind when I think of prison is sadness. Before, I had a life like that of many young people: I worked as a bartender, went out with friends in the evenings, I liked organizing dinners at home. Then I lost all this ». The reason for his detention Maida prefers not to say, “not because it is a serious matter, but I don’t feel like it. Entering here was traumatic, only thanks to the activities we can do I manage to get better. Theater excites me»Says Maida before bursting into tears. “It makes me feel elsewhere, I don’t think I’m in here.” While we talk in a private room, Francesca Tricarico in the theater room warms up her actresses. We do exercises for the voice, we dance, we look for a moment to bring out everything that is too narrow inside the cell.

“They gave me 20 years”, Renata repeats in a low voice, resigned. “My life is destroyed and so is that of my children.” It is one of the first times that Renata has taken part in the theater course and here she seems to be looking for a foothold in order not to close herself to life. «My end of sentence is in 2044. I have eight children, some married, they are my only strength. Together with the theater. I signed up for the course because when I am here I forget the suffering a little, I no longer see the section where I stay all day and I like to learn ». The stories of inmates and ex-inmates intertwine in life and on stage. They are all united by a deep suffering, sometimes by violence, by the desire for redemption. Singing love, bringing it to the stage, makes them feel more alive. “Finally free”, says Bruna, who is 51 years old and remained in prison for a year and a half. During his detention he found work and today he is a computer technician at La Sapienza University. “Since I left I have not abandoned the theater and I continue to study it.”

Only a few hours to go before the debut and the actresses of the company of the Donne del Muro Alto try and try again the positions to hold on stage. In the control room, Francesca Tricarico encourages them to the point of losing her voice. For her it is not a job, it is a piece of life. “Preparing this show was a journey inside and outside the walls of Rebibbia, because prison, like the theater, is a great magnifying glass on man and the society in which he lives. A way to find one’s needs beyond the bars and corridors of the section ». Sitting on a white cube is Annamaria. She is the oldest in the company, she holds the script in her hands, she is stretched out. His detention period is not yet defined. Annamaria does not feel the anxiety of the first time, too much life has passed on her. For her it is a moment of joy. “I’ll show what I can do,” she repeats, as she asks her companions for a candy. “And do you know what would be nice? May my grandchildren see it. “

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