Rampazzo's testosterone

From the imagination of young authors we end up expecting climatic or digital dystopias, relationships born and dead on chatrooms, identity disorientations. Fortunately, there is no shortage of surprises, and the Hystrio Festival, which animated the halls of the Elfo Puccini in Milan this week with performances and readings, is a good opportunity to think again.

In the dense programme - animated by a growing focus on stage scripts - among others, Riccardo Rampazzo, 25 years old, a recent diploma from the Silvio d'Amico school and distant memories of the Chioggia fish market he frequented as a child; his creation (by the collective Lidi Precari) arrived in Milan after convincing the jury of 'Mittelyoung', a section of the historic Mittelfest in Cividale del Friuli dedicated entirely to the 'under 30s'.

The unpronounceable title of Rampazzo's play is C19H28O2, i.e. the chemical formula of testosterone; the brothers protagonists of the story are two young fishermen immersed in dark lagoon atmospheres, poised between the concrete challenges of the job, family conflicts, and the difficulties of approaching and understanding a female universe that seems more elusive than a white whale. Tender, awkward and violent, the two are a perfect example of the masculinity that feels it is losing its dominance and performs desperate acts to recover it.

To tell the truth, there is much more to Rampazzo's dramaturgy than the title and the director's notes promise, winking at the à la page theme of patriarchy seen through the eyes of a male author. There is, first of all, a generation looking for a place in the world among the wreckage left by their fathers: the boat becomes the symbol of an ambivalent inheritance, of a profession received as an opportunity but perceived as a chain. There is also a far from trivial research on style (the text, in its complete version, can also be found on RaiPlaySound) in a happy alternation between poetic impulses and everyday language, and again between dialogues and captions that punctuate the actions as if they were seen from afar, lost in time and space. Representing the two brothers in yellow mackintoshes on stage, almost a marine Vladimir and Estragon, are two of Rampazzo's fellow academics (Leonardo Cesaroni and Paolo Sangiorgio), alongside the desired and disputed Anna (Sara Younes). The stage, as dark as water on a fishing night, is barely illuminated by spotlights, while microphones are beaten like loudspeakers to produce an oppressive soundtrack. The festival closes today with the evening of the Hystrio Prize, with a space dedicated also to very young actors selected from all over Italy: the voices of a generation digging to understand who it is, where it comes from, and who it can still become.