Play, "Tutti non ci sono" (We Are Not Alone) and film, "L'uomo Gallo" (Days of Antonio) December 20, 2011

"Tutti Non Ci Sono" (We Are Not Alone, 1980, 1989) was D'Ambrosi's American debut piece when first presented by La MaMa in 1980. It is a solo performance in which an inmate from a psychiatric ward is victimized by neglect in the outside world. The play was written in reaction to an Italian law, passed in 1978, which changed the Italian approach to mental institutions. At that time, inmates released from psychiatric wards had nowhere to turn and became helpless, homeless people living in the streets. D'Ambrosi, survivor of a rough, difficult boyhood in working-class Naples, began working with young (and less young) mental patients, seeking to find out what the violence of some of his buddies -- the paranoia and schizophrenia of the streets -- was all about. To this end, the rugged 20-year-old soccer player (he had played four years for the Milan team) set himself to some months of watching and learning into Rome's Santa Maria de la Pieta psychiatric clinic. From that experience was born what Jerry Tallmer, writing in The New York Theatre Wire, called " the marriage of theater with pathology" -- a concept for theater that is highly metaphoric, ironic and comic as well as tragic.



David Kaufman (Downtown), reviewing the work in a 1989 revival, wrote, "The risks he takes...are even more dangerous for him than for us. By stretching the more customary theatrical boundaries, D'Ambrosi's post-lobotomy denouement becomes that more effective." Theater Week (Laszlo Szekrenyi) wrote, "He is furtive at some times and other times very funny. Every so often his character, who clearly in incapable of finding his way in the 'normal world,' listens to the 'buzzing' in his ears and other voices that I (as the audience) never hear....During the performance, he is constantly interacting with the audience, talking to them, asking them for money, curious to know why they feel obligated to pretend that the secret birdcage he asked them to watch is filled with birds." (runs :50)



Sneak Peek: Film, "L'uomo Gallo" (Days of Antonio), 2010.

Toward the beginning of the twentieth century, a handicapped child named Antonio was born in Varedo, near Milan. Growing up, he was unable to stand because his legs were different lengths. He was also mentally retarded, so to avoid problems and embarrassment, his parents, uneducated poor peasants, shut him up in the henhouse with the chickens.



Over the years, Antonio began to imitate in every respect his companions in prison: clucking and pecking at food. His coop became a public attraction until a prostitute tried to have sexual intercourse with the young Antonio, which started a scandal. The young man was imprisoned in a mental hospital and died at age19 of pulmonary emphysema a few days after finding out that he was not a rooster. D'Ambrosi found this incredible story documented in the archives of the Paolo Pini hospital in Milan. From this source came the play, "Days of Antonio."



The film transports the play's characters from 1920's Varedo to 1970's Girifalco, Calabria: home of a massive psychiatric facility and filled with the colors, sounds and characters unique to its region. The charm of the Calabrian landscapes and the humanity of its impoverished inhabitants enrich the story.



"L'uomo Gallo" begins when the unfortunate young man is taken to the psychiatric hospital, where he naturally discovers a hard truth : he is not an animal and at the same time, he is not able to remake his life. Antonio is thrust into a strange, desperate universe of funny characters and marginalized groups, each with psychotic symptoms but also a huge amount of heart. Antonio achieves a particularly intense friendship with his roommate, Giacomo, who is manic about order and cleanliness. Between them blossoms a relationship made up of silences and small gestures of solidarity. They, like their fellow patients (to whom they are rebelliously uplifting), must adapt to life under the care of a nurse and a doctor whose icy and authoritarian ways hide deep imbalances that are more serious and dangerous than that those experienced by their patients.



With: Celeste Moratti (as Antonio), Dario D’Ambrosi (as Giacomo) and a cast of ten. Screenplay and direction: Dario D’Ambrosi, director of photography: Andrea Locatelli, editor: Gino Bartolini, music: Papaceccio – Francesco Santalucia, assistant director: Alessandro Corazzi. Produced by A. T. P., distributed by MEDIAPLEX ITALIA. (80 minutes)

Official Website: http://www.lamama.org