Theatre and Environmental Communications: Interview with Gabriele Vacis

by Francesco Rasero

Gabriele Vacis, 53, is a renowned Italian director, dramatist and Tv author. After graduating in Architecture, since 1982 he is in the Theatre, where introduced innovations on a national and international scale. He has been a Teacher at the “Paolo Grassi” Academy of Dramatic Arts in Milan and now teaches “Reading and oral telling” at the “Holden” School in Turin. He directed several Festivals and is director at the “Teatro Stabile” of Turin.
Recently he made his debut as film director with the movie “Uno scampolo di Paradiso”, dedicated to the town of Settimo Torinese in which he grew up: the film has been presented last year at the Torino Film Festival and will be shown Friday 27th February in Alba (Italy), within the “Aspettando Collisioni” schedule (http://www.collisioni.it/).

- Since ancient times, the Theatre worked to investigate the relationship between Man and Nature. You often chose to stage performances that addressed aspects of this complex and intricate relationship: from the famous "Vajont" with Marco Paolini, to with “Viaggiatori di pianura”, which tells of three travellers escaped from three different flood (Polesine, Tsunami and New Orleans), but also the "Zio Vanja" by A. Chekhov, with whom you opened the restored “Carignano” theatre in Turin. Is there a desire to use the Theatre as a tool for environmental communication, as well as civic education and awareness? Is it a "necessity" that Vacis, as director, feels as his own?
Sincerely, I never worked in a particular way on environment problems. Yet to reconsider, many of my shows have a strongly "ecologist" charge, starting from the old “Esercizi sulla tavola di Mendeleev” who was settled in an open space and required its own "natural places". It is not something that happens consciously, I do not think: “now I set up a ecologist show” ... I think to a story, I am fascinated by certain events and certain characters, and I want to tell them. Then I realize that such stories are concerned with environment or environmental degradation. Perhaps due to the fact that the preservation of air, earth and water -that make us live- is an important issue, perhaps the greatest issue of our times. So, in the end, I find myself writing and putting on stage "environmentalist" shows. Because to tell the present time means to tell about landscape and cities, the World in which we live.

- Does it exist, in the contemporary Theatre, at a national or international level, a "environmental" thread? Do the audience research these issues?
I do not think there is a real "thread" of environmental Theatre. The fact is that the Audience gets deep messages concerning the protection of the territory. And these issues were already present in classical Theatre: an example is "Zio Vanja" by Anton Chekhov, where one of the characters, Dr. Astrov, is a true ecologist; in the sense that, more than a century ago, had a clear awareness of land degradation, the disappearance of forests and natural habitats. Many people in the Audience, at the end of the show, came to congratulate with me for having put the emphasis on this problem, a cool problem. But I really have not done nothing, just put on stage the words that Chekhov wrote one hundred and ten years ago ...

- The relationship Man/Nature also expresses itself in the ways that Human Being occupies the territory that surrounds him: houses, roads, industries ... In other words: towns.
You have chosen to devote to the topic of the Town your first film, "Uno scampolo di Paradiso", which tells the story of where you were grown: Settimo Torinese, in outskirts of the capital of Piedmont. And in the suburbs -which are often mentioned as one of the most "dis-humanizing" examples of the superiority of Man over Nature- you are able to find "Uno scampolo di Paradiso" (a leftover of Paradise). What is the secret?
To watch and listen. Without prejudice. When I started thinking about the film, I thought of having to tell about degraded and inhuman suburbs. As a matter of fact, I remembered that place in this way. I still continue to come to Settimo Torinese, but not very frequently, because I am often away for work. Making a film about my old town was an opportunity to really look at it. And what I saw was a much less degraded situation than I recalled. When I was a child, in the Sixties, or when I was an “involved” young, in the Seventies, Settimo Torinese was a grey and violent place. It had all the potential to become one of those parisian “banlieues” that are often laid waste. But it became a quiet town, with a strong identity, maybe with a strange “pride” of being suburbs. Perhaps due to the fact that there is a dense network of solidarity structures, a strong tradition of union workers and very open-minded catholic associations; maybe there were prudent and savvy administrators, or greedy politicians... I do not know, but it can have a meaning: one of the greatest Italian writers of the Twentieth century, Primo Levi, has worked here for life... So today this place is better than many others. Anyway, in the title of the film there is also a touch of irony, because also here there are obvious problems, as everywhere. Only People did not become bad. And this is a good result these days...

- Besides being a director, Gabriele Vacis is also an architect: from here, too, you get an ability to "read" the urban signs and the dis-harmonious relationship with the territory. Do you believe that in Italy, and Europe, we need a greater awareness amongst the general public against the use, or consumption, of the land? As architect, which direction would you feel to suggest? And as artist?
An increasing awareness on environmental issues is always desirable. Also because its preservation is inextricably linked to individual behaviours. As we can denounce the great industrial discharges, which cause global warming and the resulting weather disasters, but until we not understand that these discharges are used to maintain our lifestyles level, rich and dissolute, the conditions of our environment will continue to deteriorate. However, nowadays, there is a growing willingness to consume less, to change habits and unnecessarily harmful behaviours. As architect and as artist, I feel better, rather than giving suggestions, to express two hopes. The first relates to individual behaviour: for instance I hope that people learn to use cars as little as possible, do not make the water run while shaving, turn off the light when not in a room, and so on... And that architects can build houses in order to accommodate these new behaviours. Then I hope, like many others, that the new U.S. president, Obama, continues as it has begun.

- Finally, a "technique" question: the sets by Gabriele Vacis, architect and director, have eco-friendly elements? Are (or can be) used to convey messages of environmental sustainability?

I always thought that Theatre should be "poor." In the sense that a cloth gauze effectively evokes a lake, like a bamboo cane recalls a forest. The scenes of my shows are always open, stackable, reclosable in a very short space. This means that their transport requires less resources. Furthermore, the players are travelling, as in the Theatre of the past, all on a truck ... Now I am thinking of a show illuminated only by low impact lights. But all this is for me an element of poetic, or, perhaps better, po-ethic.