Romagnola

Debut: Rome, Teatro Valle, 5 February 1959 (RaiTeche movie)

Characters and performers

Written between 1951 and 1957, it's an exhibition divided into three parts, divided in turn into days, every day into scenes, without limits of time and place. The sequence of scenes finds its unity in the protagonists, in the insistent rhythm and in the variety of interconnected events of Shakespearean inspiration, which can also be found in the use of signs to indicate the days’ date. But there is also Brecht in the comedy: in the critical considerations on the events’ context, in their very descriptions, in the stage directions’ admonishments, in the arias that introduce the single days; in the clarification of the theatrical pretence by the musicians who mimic the noise of the carts or of the motorcycles, or the sound of the beach loudspeaker, or of the sirens. The dialogues, harsh and agitated, ironical or passionate, always essential, not only express characters and states of mind, but also situate the tragic love story of the two protagonists, Cecilia and Michele, in the greater story of peasant Romagna and of its collective participation in the Resistance.

The play, in fact, relates the events from 28 June 1942 to 11 April 1945, bringing eighty characters onstage. With Romagnola, Squarzina won the 1957 Premio Marzotto. A passage of the award announcement reads: “There is no doubt that his play presents qualities of novelty and literary worth, of scenic invention and of ideological audacity, which could scarcely be found in those who do not possess technical mastery of theatre, as well as that sense of profound, ideal responsibility that binds all faculties of a person of the theatre, to the manifestation of one’s world through the minutest knowledge of the means with which one expresses oneself”.

“In questo senso il mio lavoro voleva rappresentare la crisi della civiltà contadina; nelle campagne nulla poteva essere più come prima. I rapporti di potere tra proprietari, mezzadri e braccianti risalgono a prima della Resistenza, è una conflittualità di altro tipo. Molte cose di quelle che racconta il Sangue dei vinti di Pansa in Romagna si spiegano con quello che era successo prima, perché, a parte vent’anni di fascismo, erano rapporti interni al sistema del patronato e della condizione agricola ed erano connotati dalla violenza e dallo sfruttamento”.

Luigi Squarzina

From E. Testoni, Dialoghi con Squarzina, Firenze, Le Lettere, 2015, p. 113

The rehearsals of the show

The Rai news service