A Theatre in a Roman Bath
THE Italian literary world is proud of possessing is real Art-theatre, which has existed for seven years, constantly changing its programme, and producing hundreds of the best plays by " avant-garde " writers which no other theatres would have taken the risk of producing.
The owner, director, stage-manager, electrician, scene- painter, and costume-designer of this ". Teatro degli Indipendenti " is Sig. Anton Giulio Bragaglia, an energetic and businesslike ciociaro—sprung, that is, from the region that lies midway between Naples and Rome, and which has never been remarkable, -with the great excep- tions of Cicero and Palestrina, for its artists, but is chiefly known by the -picturesquely primitive costumes of its peasants. After the War, when Art-theatres, more or less in imitation of Reinhardt's Katiimerspiele,- were springing up all over Europe and in Italy, especially in Milan, and were failing as rapidly, Bragaglia, with shrewd common sense, correctly gauged the situation. Art-theatres cannot pay ; therefore they must be supported by other sources. What better way of paying the expenses of a theatre, than by running a tabarin in it after the performance ? The idea worked without a hitch. It was at once capped by a brilliant find, the discovery of an old Roman subterranean bath, apparently quite forgotten since the seventeenth century, which he was able to obtain for very little expense, as no one had ever dreamed of wanting it.
All this is very simple—so was the egg of Columbus.
Now Bragaglia's theatre has been gravely menaced. Last spring a fire broke out in a Roman tabarin, the Apollo, and four chorus girls were burnt to death. With delightful Italian inconsistency, the newspapers not only called for the improvement of the exits in the theatres, but quite illogically burst forth in a mad vein of puritanism and peremptorily demanded the suppression of all tabarins and night resorts, " because it -is wrong," one journal declaimed, " that parasites should be enjoying themselves while hard-working men are taking their night's rest." The result has been to decrease still further the number of foreign pleasure-seekers in Rome, already diminished by the rising exchange, and to deprive the Indipendenti of its only means of subsistence. But Italians, when their first fury has abated, are very reason, able people, and there is every ground for believing that a modus vivendi will soon be reached. The political genius which has solved the problems of .the Vatican and the Adriatic so successfully, will easily find a way to keep an Art-theatre open. There are rumours that Bragaglia will be the stage-manager of the new State Theatre.created by Sig. Mussolini, which is to be directed by Sig. Pirandello and Giordano.
Meanwhile let us visit this subterranean theatre while yet we may.
After descending a lofty flight of steps into the very bowels of Palazzo Tittoni (the official residence of the Duce) you find yourself in a weird, diminutive auditorium, with a huge pier rising in the midst of it, and baroque balconies around the back. It will seat in all about two hundred spectators in its comfortable wicker chairs. What matters if the stage is so low that you might absent- mindedly take it for a tea-table, if there are no Ariadnes to conduct you to your seat, if the balconies creak at every movement and the railings quiver as though they were about to precipitate ? All that is forgotten when the curtain rises.
Bragaglia is a genius. His stage is a precarious ledge ; his actors, with a few brilliant exceptions, are often worse than puppets ; his scenes are made of paper and sackcloth, his costumes are usually the actor's ordinary clothes. But he hypnotizes them into a temporary excellence, the lines of his paper scenes and coarse hangings possess the nobility of great art, and a tactful economy of lighting does the rest.
His repertory -is vast and eclectic. Mozart's Petits Riens, Wedekind's Totentanz, Le Roi Ubu by Jarry—to take three names at random—are enough to show the width of his range. Pirandello, Giovannetti, Campanile, Bontempelli, Vergani, and a dozen other young writers have written for the Indipendenti ; a first night there is always a little event, in spite of their frequency, and anyone who wishes to see the cream of the Roman literary and artistic world can find it nowhere more carefully picked and isolated than at Bragaglia's. So intime is the atmosphere that often the audience takes an active part in .the play, flinging quips at the actors, if—as often happensthey do not know their parts, or uncere- moniously helping a fiasco to its premature grave. But there are no real failures ; for even if a play proves to be worthless, the scenery is always such a joy to the eye that one forgets its flimsy pretext.
But if Bragaglia has often—and what else are experi- mental theatres for ?—produced plays which cannot withstand the test of the limelight, he has also discovered the talent of young and unknown authors, such as d'Errico, who began a brilliant career with the production of his Vestito di Rosso e di Nero—a sort of Hogarthian Harlot's Progress, which, despite its skill, would hardly be passed by the censor in England. But the greatest revelation of the Indipendenti is Luigi Bonelli.
This clever young Florentine, with shrewd under- standing of contemporary snobbishness, presented his first plays to Bragaglia as translations from the Russian by one Vassily Chetov-Sternberg, whom he declared he had met at Capri. They are the bizarre expression of a theory that the bed is the centre of human life ; but there is no need to be alarmed by that, they are not so bad as they sound. Their success was immediate and striking ; the reputation of Chetov was made throughout Italy, and even French critics spoke of him as a rival of Gorki's. When the cat was at last let out of the bag, there was a great stir, and Bonelli, who had awakened in [obscurity, went to bed—a thing which, in spite of his theory, he very rarely does—famous.
His Hotel-thief is a delightful farce in which the thief, at bay, takes refuge in the audience and begins a loud and severe criticism of the rest of the play. The Doctor for a Sick Lady shows us the cure of an hysterical patient by an escaped madman, who, as reward for his labours, becomes inspector of all the mad-houses of Russia ; an extraordinary satire both on Soviet Russia and on modern medicine. His Emperor, in which an actor suddenly becomes convinced, while on the stage, that he really is Napoleon, and thus paralyses the action of the play ; all these comedies are among the most original and scintillating productions of the modern European theatre.
There can be no doubt that plays such as this could never have found their way on to the ordinary professional stage—although of course all the managers are now eager to have them ; they might perhaps not even have been written but for the genial inspiration afforded by Bragaglia's little theatre.
That this inspiration is largely derived from the work of an Englishman may offer some meagre consolation to a country which to-day has the best playwrights and the worst theatres in the world ; and which, as it surveys the progress made from Russia to Rome under the stimulus of Mr. Gordon Craig, may complacently murmur to itself, " Who says we are not a nation of artists ? "
HENRY FURST.
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