Stefano Massini: “So stories save our lives”

The next story could be told in Sanremo. And if he goes up on the stage of the festival, with his friend Paolo Jannacci, it will also be thanks to the theater and his own Stories. This is the title of the show, produced by the Piccolo Teatro, che Stefano Massini on October 26 he takes to the stage at the Pergola in Florence. Of Stories the author speaks from his Tuscan home. It is – he says, alluding to a coming and going of technicians and workers: there is little at home, the problems add up – “a furious day”.
Creator of Lehman Brothers (the show is currently staged on Broadway, directed by Sam Mendes, co-star Adrian Lester), narrator of A clean sweep on La7, presenter of I restart from Raitre with Andrea Delogu: Massini always expresses himself with suggestive terms. And he often emphasizes the concept by multiplying its definitions.

Where do the Stories?
«The show was planned before the pandemic, as an evening in which the mechanisms, strategies, tactics, tricks, reasons why humans invent stories would be told. The idea was to have a narrator and a singer-musician on stage, Paolo Jannacci, in turn somehow a source of stories ».

But then the theaters closed for the first time, in the spring of 2020.
«Stories then it was chosen by Piccolo as the first show for the reopening, in June 2020. The result was a reaction from the stadium audience, so much so that we decided to propose it again and in November it sold out a week, with many people who are not managed to enter. But while it was on stage the theaters closed again ».

We are at the third time: we hope it will go better.
“I am happy to take it back to the Pergola in Florence and then to Milan, because it brings me back to the reason for what we do in the theater: why does the human being feel the need to share narratives, where is the strength of the story?”.

A first answer?
«Freud: in dreams we seem to live the stories of others, but in reality it is all a camouflage, we always talk about ourselves. And a story interests you because you find yourself in it, it tells something about yourself. It is a mirror in which you recognize yourself and reflect yourself ».

Are the stories only individual or are there collective ones?
“There are many in which we recognize ourselves in many. Why theOdyssey passionate from what world is the world? ».

Because?
“It is the story of the infinite journey of a man who goes through all kinds of things and continually postpones the return, to certainty, until he does so and finds that everything has changed. Who hasn’t experienced this feeling, the thrill of getting away from the safe path, only to return and discover that what he thought was home has changed and he himself has changed? Pinocchio also continues to be a great story: who hasn’t experienced the anguish of having to become an adult, stop playing? ».

Is there a personal story of yours in the show?
«Yes, when as a boy – collecting stories of elderly people in Florence – I found an illiterate old man who told me an episode of the Second World War in which he had been involved. It was incredible, the greatest writing lesson, and it was given to me by that illiterate ».

At the time of the first lockdown, she reported on La7 land Ten things that will never be the same again. Are you still convinced that these things – from our idea of ​​the world to sociability, to fear – have changed definitively?
“The second wave, during which I also fell ill with Covid, which lasted from last October to May, was so long that it changed everything a bit. It made us much more exhausted than in the first lockdown, when we stood on the balconies with the tricolor and sang. It was a feeling of implosion, a claustrophobic closure in a den shelter, where the house also became a cage: you locked yourself inside and saved yourself, but at the same time you were in a chain. We have come out much more suspicious ».

Wary of others?
«With regard to life, which has reserved for us such a long and undervalued experience: a whole year, a substantial slice of people’s lives. It was also a huge blackout from a narrative point of view. A lot of affective, sentimental, working, life projects have been blocked, cut as if with a scissors ».

How do you get out of the narrative blackout?
“We need to trust the stories that tell us it’s possible to start over after the break. Because stories save the human being. As also stated in the Decamerone».

But there are also those who have not emerged from the devastating experience. On the contrary, he has increased his anger, which then leads to violence in the streets.
“In my opinion, the danger in this case is in those who have always desperately sought the excuse of dissatisfaction, frustration and collective anger to use them to their own advantage. In the Roman square that assaults – a very serious thing – the CGIL or devastates the emergency room, in my opinion, there is someone who has an interest in chaos. And who is completely uninterested in the green pass and vaccine issue: someone who would go to the streets to destroy even if it were something he does not believe in the least. Interest is destabilization, public disorder, the junkyard on duty ».

The square on one side, the theaters on the other. But can the stories point out a way out?
«The goal is to help the listener live better. This does not mean that stories must always give a solution, sometimes the most beautiful are those that do not. However, the fact that someone found themselves in the need to pass on to others their sense of loneliness, disaffection, rendered in front of a solution that they cannot find is already an element that makes you feel less alone “.