With a kaleidoscope of unspeakable stories, Roberto Saviano returns to the stage as the author and protagonist of Apartments. The intimate life of criminal powera theatrical monologue that takes place in the Mediation hall from Roma. The work is a provocative fragment from his most recent book The two of us belong together, still unpublished in Spanish. It is not the first time that the writer and journalist has appeared in the theater. In the past he has already staged his books from the time of the famous Gomorrah.
“The theater is a living place where what I write is reborn,” he explains. Saviano. “All my books have experienced a theatrical decline. Theater is liberation from the barrier of smartphones. I only talk to those who are there. If you don’t come, you don’t share, you don’t listen.”
In Belong, Saviano touches on a sensitive topic: love and sex life in organized crime. The stage story is inspired by the book, but different from the book. I’m alone on stage, everything that happens is based on words, on stories. It’s about the relationship that criminal organizations have to sexuality and love. In the theater I take the audience to the place where wounds are healed and where people reclaim their property. I close the piece with a text from [el filsofo francs] André Gorz, the most beautiful love letter ever written. Before that we meet Paride, Menelaus…”
- Is the central theme of the search for freedom through love?
- Absolutely, yes: there is a form of rebellion through the reappropriation of bodies, because the control that criminal organizations exercise is total, encompassing the body and the emotions. The book and the work affirm exactly this, that in certain contexts, loving who you want and how you want is an act of rebellion.
- What relationship do you have with the theater as an audience member?
- I love the theater, but I have been living under surveillance for 18 years; It was very difficult to leave. I have always appreciated community theater that works in the suburbs and gives hope. As a child, they took me to Dario Fo’s shows, which were fundamental to my education. Shortly before publication Gomorrah I really appreciated the theater project Arrived empty by Martinelli and Braucci, a forum of freedom. I was very close to Nuovo Teatro Sanit and the great work of Mario Gelardi with his company. I feel an emotional connection to Neapolitan theater.
- As an author and the only actor on stage, what relationship do you have with the audience?
- The stage is a unique place: you feel the audience and understand whether what you say evokes emotions. I had the privilege of performing at the Bellini in Naples for almost three weeks. At every performance the hall was filled to the last row of boxes. When I was in college we called him the PalomeroIt cost less, it was the only ticket we could afford. I fondly remember the lunches that Anna, the Bellini seamstress, prepared for us children during rehearsals.
- Is theater more lively than cinema?
- Clear. It’s the closeness, the breathing between viewer and viewer.
- He complained that in previous lectures he had not received the press attention he deserved.
- When the government singles you out, it is difficult for anyone to publicly support you because everyone fears falling into disgrace. Only failures are news, never successes, especially when it comes to me.
- Do they hate him for political reasons?
- I disrupted the narrative that a particular politician wants to create about the country and his work. Half the government put me on trial, they violently called me to rallies, they campaigned behind my back and accused me of making money by writing about crimes. I have never sympathized with any political party because I refuse to be a like-minded intellectual.
- Is your life still complicated?
- This is a battle I fought and lost. They sentenced me to a hellish life. I have also lost the battle for prisons, which are overcrowded and conditions for inmates are very difficult. Prisons are a focus of criminal organizations’ work. If I came back I would do it more carefully.
- It is said that he succeeded in defaming his city of Naples.
- Members of the Camorra and top politicians have said it. Giorgia Meloni said it. I live under surveillance. What success are we talking about? Talking about criminal organizations means getting into trouble because those who should be fighting against them are in their hands. By this I don’t mean the judiciary and the police, but the political elite in general. If an author becomes the target of attacks, it is because the policy has failed. When you’re young, you think you’ll come back from the war alive. I am alive, but I have returned with mutilations that make my life impossible.
