THE INTERVIEW

   

     

     

      In recent years he has traveled to every corner of the world, from Venezuela to Iran, from Bosnia to Egypt, from Thailand to Russia to the USA, and for him in every place the theater is still the language that allows people and young communities to come together in a shared time and space, to have a real physical and mental experience and communicate with their own being. From the body of the actor to the body of the audience.   

      Franco Ungaro, who lives in Lecce, is a Philosophy graduate from the University of Salento, and until March 2015 was the director of Lecce’s Cantieri teatrali Koreja. In March 2016 he became the artistic director of the San Domenico Theater of Crema (Cremona) and founder of the Mediterranean actor’s academy in Lecce. Besides numerous articles in the daily press and magazines, he has published the books Dimettersi dal Sud (Laterza, 2006), Lecce sbarocca (Besa, 2011) and Vado a Lecce. Artisti, storici e scrittori in giro per la città (Kurumuny, 2015).

 

      If we look at the cultural infrastructure and its governance, I’d say there is a major gap, we are far behind, even though in the last ten years there has been considerable public investment in culture and performance, especially by the Region.    Puglia has attracted more tourism than culture. Apart from the “Festival della Valle d’Itria” and the “Notte della Taranta”, the tourist still wants sun and sea. We have a cultural and environmental heritage that is still underdeveloped. The context is full of potential but there is a lack of courageous strategies and policies to integrate the sectors of activity, generations, communities, people and projects in a holistic approach. 

     

      How come you work as artistic director outside Lecce? Aren’t you happy with your hometown? 

      After thirty years my professional experience with Cantieri teatrali Koreja has come to an end, I think they have played out their role at a catalyst of creative energy. I didn’t run away and I’m not disappointed with Lecce, although my relations the town’s public administration have never been marked by dialog or by the mutual recognition of roles that must remain autonomous and parallel, without interference and conditioning. For the past year I’ve been commuting between Salento and Lombardia. I accepted the job in Crema because it’s a new challenge, and a more difficult one, in a theater that doesn’t have much public funding but relies mainly on the enthusiasm of the people of Crema and their great love for the theater. I found there a hard-working community with a great cultural tradition and a strong belief in working together. 

 

      Trump is the most representative icon of the age we are living in, with him there is the final collapse of the illusion that, with the fall of the Berlin wall, we were on a path towards a model of society that was more open, intercultural, more democratic without blocs and conflicts. Overwhelmed by bureaucracy and corruption, Europe and America are losing more and more the idea of politics and democracy as government for the common good. The citizens are hurting so much, feeling insecure and unprotected, that they try to defend their own special interests instead of fighting for the welfare of all. Trump has presented himself as the defender of Americans who see their sovereignty and their rights threatened by globalization. He has arrived after processes of change have already developed in advanced societies, with the crisis of politics and democracy and with the worldwide redistribution of wealth. I, too, think these changes will take us backwards towards a past that we’ve already known, of social and sexual discrimination, of new wars and of serious social conflicts.  

 

      What is the theater for you today? Can it still have a future in our society?

      Despite the proliferation of new media and the triumph of the culture of the image, the theater shines its own special light. Through its magic, the ideas, messages, visions, feelings and emotions on stage become a unique and unrepeatable experience of physical participation and sharing. The theater will exist as long as we continue to feel the need for others, the need to communicate. The theater is a form of resistance to forgetting, to oblivion, to the loss of values, to social breakdown, to the sterilization of passions and feelings. It is the counter-current that pushes us out of the pond.