Feeling is believing

‘Dopo la Battaglia’ feeds off the director’s own difficult past, and in part emanates from one of the main characters.

By BARRY DAVIS
Director Pippo Delbono's ‘Dopo la Battaglia’ (photo credit: LORENZO PORRAZZINI)
Director Pippo Delbono's ‘Dopo la Battaglia’
(photo credit: LORENZO PORRAZZINI)
Pippo Delbono doesn’t want us to get too comfortable.
The 55-year-old Italian director-actor is bringing his thought-provoking work Dopo la Battaglia to these shores for two performances at the Jerusalem Theatre (June 7-8) as part of the Israel Festival.
It is pretty safe to say that few people in this country have ever seen anything quite like Dopo la Battaglia (After the Fight). It embraces a plethora of genres, styles and visual formats to convey eye-opening ideas in a no-nonsense, visceral manner. The production takes in opera, dance, theater, classical music and an abundance of humor – of both dark and farcical ilks – mixed in with moments of lumbering emotion, bewilderment and pain that produce a heady oxymoronic fusion designed to keep the audience wide eyed and cued in.
Delbono does not mess about. He addresses all kinds of issues on the most basic level possible. High emotion, bordering on insanity, is front and center throughout the work, part of which feeds off the director’s own difficult past, and part emanates from one of the main characters in Dopo la Battaglia, a 78-year-old man who goes by the name of Bobo.
“I met Bobo in 1996 when I went to a psychiatric hospital,” explains Delbono. “I went there to do an acting workshop, and three of the patients in the hospital were chosen to take part. Bobo was one of them.”
At the time, the latter had been an inmate at the institution for no fewer than 45 years. “He was put in there when he was 16,” says the director. “He didn’t really know anything else. It was like he had been in prison all his life.”
Communicating with someone who has spent nigh on their entire life in a controlled, constricted environment, shut away from everyday life, could be a difficult enough task. But the director’s job seemed to be made infinitely tougher by the fact that Bobo was both deaf and mute. Nevertheless, the director said they found a common language from the outset.
“I had contracted AIDS and I was very depressed at the time. I had to fight for my life,” he says.
Thankfully he is now healthy. “Bobo and I connected very easily. We could communicate on an emotional level. I understood him. We were both very fragile. You know, he can’t hear the music in Dopo la Battaglia but he knows exactly what is being played.”
The titular altercation, to Delbono’s mind, is an everyday occurrence rather than a meeting of warring factions on a grand scale. “A battle is something that we pass through. It is like we are in a prison. And when we are out of the prison, we see the freedom and the possibilities we can have. We see the possibilities of humanity.”
I suggest that is something any artist experiences on a regular basis. Creating any work of art is a battle.
“Yes, that’s true,” Delbono concurs. “It is a battle to bring something out of yourself. Because art is something that you touch more deeply than your culture, or your political condition, your ideas, or your general condition. You must search deep into humanity.”
While that may sound like a challenging rite of passage, Delbono wants us to keep tabs on where we come from, and never lose sight of our clean-slate point of origin. “I want to see the world like a child, with innocent eyes. That is not easy, but an artist must try to achieve purity.”
Delbono found something of that in Bobo. “He is a little like a child. He was fantastic to work with when I came to the hospital. His movement was wonderful.”
The two clicked and one day Bobo demonstrated a surprising ability. “He asked me to come with him to the basketball court and he threw the ball into the basket from behind the basket. He couldn’t even see it but he got the ball in, twice. That’s when I understood that this man is really special.”
Mind you, on another occasion, Bobo almost got the director into serious trouble. “There was a football match on TV between Italy and Korea, and Bobo came to my house to watch it,” Delbono recalls. “Korea won and everyone in Italy was depressed. But Bobo saw Korea win and wanted to put a big Korean flag in my window. He didn’t understand why I wouldn’t let him, but I think my neighbors might have killed me,” chuckles the Italian.
Dopo la Battaglia also features the intriguing dance skills of Marigia Maggipinto, who learned some of her craft under the aegis of the late-celebrated German modern dancer-choreographer Pina Bausch. Delbono also enjoyed some fruitful artistic synergies with Bausch.
In addition to directing the onstage activity, Delbono joins in the acting fray, in a sort of madcap-MC role with some added frenetic and emotive movement slots.
Most of all, Delbono says he wants us to be moved by the work. “You know people go to the theater to see something they know, something they feel familiar with, something that makes them feel secure. I don’t want that. I remember going to a dance show by Pina Bausch, and I didn’t understand it. Someone asked me afterwards what it was about and I told him, ‘I don’t know,’ but I had this strong feeling in my stomach, which I took with me from the show. That was what was important, not understanding what I saw, or even remembering it. You have to feel something, otherwise art is dead.”
Left-field ethos notwithstanding, Delbono knows his nuts and bolts. He studied theater and knows all the ins-and-outs of acting and directing, as well as having a deep understanding of opera. But he says he doesn’t let that cloud his artistic vision.
“You mustn’t let technique get in the way,” he declares. “Art is about emotion.” • Dopo la Battaglia will be performed in Italian, with Hebrew surtitles. For tickets and more information: *6226, 623-7000 and israel-festival.org/English/