Bergamo birthday, glimpses of Eugenio

"No, no," said the taxi driver. "Arlecchino no from Bergamo. Arlecchino from leetle leetle village BY Bergamo. I no remember the name." That is even more beautiful -- that Harlequin is not from a small town after all, but from an even smaller place outside it.

Those of us who grew up in the country, 20 miles away from the place outside the small town, understand perfectly.


This is Bergamo. Behind you, out of town, lie tall grassy fields, leafy trees with black trunks, a river.




This is where Odin performed Anderson's Dream, the grey building on the left. Unbelievable stones, acoustics, archaic human theatrical scale.


This is the chapel you see through the arch, as you wait for Anderson to open its doors.


This is the courtyard of the university, built in an ancient church, Sant' Agostino. The inner secret courtyard, which you only find if you continue past beyond the first algae-stoned dilapidated one. It is far more ruined that it appears here -- and more powerful. This space cries for Greek theatre.

And this -- imagine jeans, brown & pink flowy v-necked top, black jacket -- is me on my 48th birthday. Standing in soft air, singing in a high almost soundless voice, waiting for Andersen . Doing slowtens from the infinite sky of the piazza, toward the baroque chapel, singing. Sitting with Mia, who bought me a strawberry & chocolate ice cream & capuccino, and gave me a yellow rose. Watching the snow drift earthward in Andersen, and realizing how Danish, which sounds normal in Holstebro, sound absolutely mysterious in Italy.

Thinking.

Feeling.

Reverberating.

I listened to Eugenio's talk at the conference today. I was glad to hear him in his native tongue, on his native soil. He looked slim, imperative, clear. It was his own legend he told, of coming to Norway, to Poland, to Grotowski, to the Odin.

Listening to Italian is like watching fish from the dock. I catch only glimpses, sometimes a sighting. I get 30-40%. I catch adjectives, miss nouns.

At one point he was describing how he and Grotowski would converse. "But then I realized," he said, "That everything about how we talked -- the vulgarities, the trivialities, the [---], the duration, how long we talked, everything -- was in fact an exact reflection of [---]." It KILLED me to miss that point. I was dying to know if he said, "of our process," or "of our company" or "of the production." Lost, vanished.

I asked Jusy afterward. "I do not remember this point," she said, rubbing her head and trying.

The mysteriousness... the incantation... Cyrano de Bergerac... my chest... the sonority... traditional theatre, very professional, very good professional actors... I had lost the sonority... Theatre of Art of Stanislavski... Vakhtangov... Kamerny Theatre... There was small book published in New York at this time, very important book. It described the famous conference where Meyerhold [---] and it said very clearly that [---]. This is incredibly important because [---]... She laid the table very particularly with many many points of [---]... Polish theatre school... Grotowski... I took comfort... I took solace... Grotowski does not say this to the actors of course, but to me he says [---]... The Polish think of themselves as the Pieta... the Polish believe very strongly that [---]... The scenographer of the Akropolis production was architect, genius. He had lived 4 years in Auschwitz and he [---] the tunnels, the boots... Grotowski and the actors, they absolutely [---]... the founding of the Odin was based on not, on negative... we all had jobs... the incantation... desperately... most extremely... I watch... the [---] of gold... closed/ended...

Ferme. Perdido. Sonorite. Extremissimo. Teatro. Quanto. Que. Mysterioso. Molto, molto. Polognie. Pollacka.

Today is my compleano.