Interview with Ivan Cotroneo, author and director of this brilliant comedy about prejudice on stage from 9 to 21 December at the Teatro Manzoni
Twenty-four years old. Such is the age difference between Laura and her first husband, a writer older than her who recently passed away. And twenty-four are the years that separate Laura, now an established fifty-year-old writer, and Andrea, a young man with whom she begins to form a relationship.
After Lovers And Complaint, Ivan Cotroneo returns to the theater with his third theater show, of which he is, as always, the author and director. Scandalwho sees Anna Valle and Gianmarco Saurino protagonists of a story based on the taboos that we believe we have left behind but which continue to be rooted in a society that legitimizes certain behaviors only for men.
Ivan, this is your third text written and directed for the theater
“I work a lot as a writer and screenwriter for cinema and television and I have always had a bit of modesty in approaching the theater because I have always been a regular spectator. Already from high school I did odd jobs to pay for subscriptions and I approached it with great respect. I wanted to approach it only when I felt ready to write something that was not a revisitation of an already written work of mine, but a story that respected theatrical spaces and times.”
Can you tell us about your latest show?
“In all my screenplays I have always had the ambition to talk about themes from a different point of view, to point out the contradictions present in society. in “Scandal” I was interested in investigating the double standard, what happens when a man or a woman behaves in the same way; what changes in the reception of public opinion, what actually becomes scandalous.
The show opens with the background to the death of Goffredo, Laura’s husband. Andrea arrives in the house, a twenty-eight year old boy commissioned by his husband to organize the library. She begins a relationship with this man and after many years, she finds herself in the reverse situation.
A series of prejudices are unleashed around her which are the pretext to explain how certain behaviors carried out by a woman are seen as incorrect and unusual, sometimes even dangerous. It’s a brilliant comedy but with a serious part that really belongs to me, because the gender gap, in every sense, is something that bothers me a lot.”
Anna Valle and Gianmarco Saurino
“In a show the stories are built with the characters and I decided to start with them, with protagonists who had a personality and a life of their own. They immediately took shape with the figures of the two actors with whom I wanted to continue working, Anna Valle, and with whom I would have liked to start, Gianmarco Saurino. I always thought that there were many strings in Anna’s talent that had not yet been expressed. Gianmarco, on the other hand, is a young actor who I have always admired.”
So while you were writing, did you already have their figures in mind?
“This always helps in writing when it is possible to do so, even in cinema and television, but in the theater something different happens because you know that with those actors you will not find yourself on a crowded set doing a small piece of the story, but weeks working closely together for the entire staging. This is the part of my work in the theater that I like most: deepening the work with the actors on the character and on the theatre, in addition, obviously, to the live emotion that the theater offers.
In this show we talk about love, sex, manipulation, teaching, exchange; and to maintain this exchange there needs to be chemistry between the actors, which in my opinion happened. And with technicians, screenwriters, costume designers, musicians a sort of family was created.”
After three successes, you have discovered that writing for the theatre, in addition to enjoying it a lot, is also very good for you
“I consider it a gift. I have always written stories since I was a child. I graduated in screenwriting and I believe a lot in the power of fictional stories; I myself have been transformed by the characters I have read, by those I have seen on television or at the cinema. This project for the theater will certainly not be the last, because it is an emotion that I do not want to lose. Furthermore, I can count on a production, the Diana Or.IS, willing to invest in new and original securities. Among other things, the same production of those shows that I went to see with passion in Naples many years ago. It’s as if I saw myself on the balcony again, thirty-five years later. An incredible and wonderful short circuit!”
