Roberto Saviano: “When you are young you think that you will return alive from the war. I am alive, but with mutilations that make my life impossible” | EUROtoday

With a kaleidoscope of unspeakable tales, Roberto Saviano returns to the stage as creator and protagonist of Appartenere. The intimate lifetime of prison energya theatrical monologue that represents within the Conciliation Auditorium of Roma. The work is a provocative fragment taken from his current guide We two belong collectively, nonetheless unpublished in Spanish. It shouldn’t be the primary time that the author and journalist has carried out within the theater. In the previous he has already staged his books from the time of the well-known Gomorrah.

“The theater is a living place where what I write is reborn,” he explains. Saviano. “All my books have had a theatrical decline. Theater is liberation from the dividing screen of smartphones. I only talk to those who are there. Those who don't come don't share, they don't listen.”

In Belong, Saviano touches on a thorny matter: romantic and sexual life in organized crime. The stage story is impressed by the guide however is completely different from the guide. On stage I’m alone, all the things that occurs relies on phrases, on tales. It is concerning the relationship that prison organizations have with sexuality and love. In the theater I take the viewer to the place the place wounds are healed and the place the place folks reclaim their property. I shut the piece with a textual content of [el filsofo francs] André Gorz, probably the most stunning love letter ever written. Before, we meet Paride, Menelaus…”.

Is the central theme in 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, it encompasses the body and the feelings. The book and the work affirm precisely this, that in certain contexts, loving who you want and how you want is an act of rebellion.

What is your relationship, as a spectator, with the theater?

I love the theater but I have lived under surveillance for 18 years; It was very difficult to go. I have always appreciated civil theater, the one 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 publishing Gomorrah I greatly appreciated the theater project Arrived empty by Martinelli and Braucci, a forum of freedom. I was very close to the Nuovo Teatro Sanit and the great work of Mario Gelardi with his company. I feel an emotional link with the Neapolitan theater.

As the author and the only actor on stage, how do you relate to the audience?

The stage is a unique place: you feel the audience and understand if what you are saying generates emotions. I had the privilege of performing for almost three weeks at the Bellini in Naples. At each performance the theater was filled to the last row of boxes. When I was in college we called him the palomero, it 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 alive than cinema?

Clear. It is the closeness, the breathing between spectator and spectator.

He has complained that in previous presentations he did not receive the attention he deserved from the press.

When the Government singles you out, it is difficult for anyone to support you publicly, 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 have disturbed the narrative that a certain politician wants to make of the country and his work. Half the Government took me to trial, they violently summoned me to rallies, they campaigned behind my back, accusing me of having made money writing about crimes. I have never sympathized with any political party because I refuse to be an aligned intellectual.

Is your life still complicated?

That is a battle I fought and lost. They condemned me to a hellish life. I also lost the battle of the prisons, which are overflowing, the inmates are in very difficult conditions. Prisons are a focus of work for criminal organizations. If I came back, I would do it more carefully.

They say he has been successful in defaming his city, Naples.

Members of the Camorra and top-level politicians have said it. Giorgia Meloni said it. I live under surveillance. What success are we talking about? If talking about criminal organizations means getting into trouble, it is because those who should fight against them are in their hands. I am not referring to the judiciary and the police, but to the political elite in general. If a writer becomes a 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.

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