On Tuesday, March 8, 2024, Matteo Cremon, Michele Mori and Stefano Rota will perform on the stage of the Teatro di Villazzano with the show "Buffoni all 'inferno".
From what world is the world, Comedians are frightened when attracted to Hell. There is nothing to do, the Averno is the final destination for those who are ready to do anything to get a laugh. Hell and all its sulphurous jailers are the basis of popular tradition and the tales of storytellers. It encloses the top and the bottom, the tragic and the grotesque. The Alighieri gives us an immortal example of this when that devil Barbariccia, in song XXI, gave the marsc ’forward with that sound from the bottom of the belly, or rather: "of the ass made trumpet". And there would be plenty of examples, without even the need to bother the devil Alichin, father of the famous mask with the colourful dress.
Between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, I tried to investigate some examples of hellish tales, low-bodied pamphlets with a mephitic scent. The French fablieux are full of them, one above all "the villain's peto". Faceted story about a poor demonic spirit victim of the miasms of an unhealthy farmer. Still speaking of death, the oral tradition of our country tells of some carnival moments where it was used to recite the paradoxical testament of the pig and, why not, of numerous other courtyard animals, heard in the public square before becoming the main course of Mardi Gras. But there are stories, novels, songs and stornelli and there would be many.
These episodes are narrated by three actors or rather jesters, comedians, outcasts, people willing to do anything to bring rice. They will do so using buffoonish art, that fifteenth-century mastery that then gave birth to the great tradition of comedians of Art. Weird figures, newcomers, grotesque disguises, bizarre songs, demonic masks and obscene improvisations will be the basis of "Buffoni all 'Inferno", a funny and tragic decameron.
Matteo Cremon, Michele Mori and Stefano Rota, experienced interpreters, for years projected towards popular theatre, the comedy of art, the purest game of theatre, have accepted the challenge of digging through texts, forgotten stories and folkloristic traditions, in search of nothing less than the heart of hell.
Marco Zoppello
