The Prose and Other Paths Season of the Donizetti Theater Foundation continues under the sign of one of the great names of Italian theater, Eduardo De Filippo: in fact, from Saturday, March 8 to Sunday, March 16, the following is staged on the city’s main stage The Art of Comedy, with adaptation and direction by Fausto Russo Alesi. The Palermitan actor and director himself, who has already been appreciated several times in Bergamo, will play the role of the capocomico Oreste Campese, the text’s main protagonist. Other performers and characters: David Meden (Veronesi, piantone), Sem Bonventre (Palmira, hostess of the tavern), Alex Cendron (His Excellency De Caro, prefect), Paolo Zuccari (Giacomo Franci, his secretary), Filippo Luna (Quinto Bassetti), Gennaro De Sia (Padre Salvati), Imma Villa (Lucia Petrella), Demian Troiano Hackman (Gerolamo Pica), Davide Falbo (Un uomo).

The Art of Comedy, an extraordinary and brilliant work by Eduardo De Filippo, is part of “Odd Days,” the collection that-from different angles-addresses the difficult issues of everyday life. Incredible is the strength and topicality of the text that brings us in a direct way to confront the mortification and censorship of culture. Written in 1964 – ambiguous and at the same time farcical – it is a little-visited work, seemingly less explosive than the most famous masterpieces; instead, it is a masterful, wide-ranging and extraordinarily imperfect text, as imperfect is the human being in search of his identity, his right to exist, in short, in search of answers to those pressing and necessary questions that cannot wait any longer.

The questions, doubts, responsibilities, constraints and weaknesses that Eduardo brings to the table affect us all, and that “Theater,” whether it is a theater company, a community or a small world, becomes a resonator of our relationship with power and the need to be heard and, above all, recognized. “Come to the theater Mr. Prefect! – says the head playwright Oreste Campese – In Theater the supreme truth has been and always will be the supreme fiction…”: it all starts here. How much can the distance and filter of theater, through fiction, help us deal with reality?

Winner of three Ubu Awards as best leading and supporting actor, nominated for a David di Donatello for best supporting actor in Marco Bellocchio’s Esterno Notte, Fausto Russo Alesi has been one of the most appreciated actors in film and theater since the early 2000s. In cinema, besides Bellocchio, he has worked with Silvio Soldini, Florestano Vancini, Mario Monicelli, Carlo Mazzacurati, Sergio Castellitto, Marco Tullio Giordana, and Roberto Andò. In theater he has collaborated with Luca Ronconi, Serena Sinigaglia, Peter Stein, Damiano Michieletto, Gabriele Vacis and others. Fausto Russo Alesi starred in 2017 at Teatro Sociale in Ivan, a play loosely based on Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, co-produced by Fondazione Teatro Donizetti and directed by Serena Sinigaglia.