Pietrangelo Buttafuoco

ALTER native, the title of the 54th International Theatre Festival of La Biennale di Venezia, bears within it the “fertile tension” that prompted Artistic Director Willem Dafoe’s initial idea. On the one hand, alter – “the other” in Latin – implies a two-way, dialectical relationship characterised by opposition and difference; on the other, native calls into question the notion of origin and cultural belonging. Taken as a whole, this semantic oscillation becomes a very specific word: alternative. This duality differs and deviates from the norm, and emphasises the purpose of a Festival that is committed to theatre as both an ancient and contemporary clash with the human condition; a remote yet ever-present instinct that has the power to regenerate by returning to the sources of ritual, community, the combined presence of the actors’ and spectators’ bodies – and by the passing on of knowledge acquired primarily through experience.
Dafoe’s Festival, in short, sees theatre as a place where we go back to the truth of every human encounter. The actor’s presence on stage and the living relationship created with the audience therefore become tools for recapturing a shared experience, as part of an artform that unfolds through time (and in the present) by virtue of the unique relationship between creator and spectator.
At a time when reality appears increasingly fragile – exposed as it is to the fragmentation of narratives and the proliferation of videos and images that challenge and question it – theatre reaffirms the power of first-hand perception, of a complete and tangible reconnection.
The actor’s body, its exposure, and even its vulnerability lay the groundwork for an embodied truth, one which is directly connected to the intensity of the experience shared in the here and now, in which we can finally see everything we thought we knew with fresh eyes. It is no coincidence that Dafoe has selected a quote by T. S. Eliot as the programme’s epigraph: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time”.
These words encapsulate the profound meaning of ALTER native as a genuine tool for knowledge; by moving across languages, geographies and traditions, it leads us back to what we thought we knew, and suddenly reveals it in a new light.
Over the course of the research he has undertaken over the past year, Dafoe has emphasised the need to turn our gaze towards theatrical forms that often lie outside established circuits; to find practices that are still rooted in humanist values and community, in which theatre contributes to the transmission of knowledge, wonder, as well as the construction of meaning, and catharsis. Therein why the programme is structured as a constellation of diverse experiences and cultural contexts that are capable of reimbuing theatre with its original purpose.
Thus, the Festival spans a range of artists and companies for whom stagecraft retains something essential, and even irregular. They respond to the polished perfections with the kind of authentic risk-taking that has the potential to leave a mark. Dafoe states this very clearly when he contrasts the overproduction we have experienced in the last few decades with an “amateur spirit”, in which the latter provides fertile terrain for the unprecedented.
It’s in the cracks, in the most peripheral and unrestrained dimensions, that art truly breathes. It’s within this context that we find the awards given to Mario Banushi (Silver Lion) and to Emma Dante (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement). Within their respective personal journeys, these two artists share common themes such as family, mourning, memory, violence, and a ritualistic aspect that deals with pain and transformation. Banushi’s trilogy Romance Familiare, presented in Venice in its entirety, and Emma Dante’s new production, I fantasmi di Basile, both fit perfectly within this framework, in which theatre once again establishes itself as a truth-telling device.