Notizie Dal Mio Cuore - 28
When you live many lifetimes in one day…. when you don’t even have time to food shop for you or your kitty, and end up feeding the “poor thing” treats for three days which aunt Tamara brought all the way from Los Angeles, god love her (see pictures of Tamara as tourist goddess, and at the beach in Livorno (she’s the one under the sheet!) it is difficult to find the energy to sit and share the life that moves past your vision like a story unfolding in one of those books whose pages you pass quickly over your thumb as you watch the character dance through hoops or do a jig.
Do you write about your passionate moments with the nice-but-it’s-only-passionate-moment-making Italian actor who is very sweet, really, and truly talented (in the Italian language - god how I wish he could speak English and be in our second production!) but reminds you - ever so somewhat - of the first “passion” you experienced here due anni fa (2 years ago) when you first stepped foot on Florentine soil and felt….. so very …. alive. And now you feel so very at home and making love - having sex really ….. is something you do….. but truly doesn’t mean all that much except it comforts you when the days are long and the effort put out is so strong and complex and hopeful to building….. Florence International Theatre Company. To really building something that could actually affect people, change things, offer outlets for creativity and communal conversation. To see a vision of a life, in a partnership with a truly inspiring friend, unfold…. hit walls….. make left turns and right. Or do you write about your two dates with the Consul General of….. a very large country many people are afraid of at the moment…. set up for you by a dear friend - Juliana - who you have had many adventures in Florence with and who has been led (by allowing herself the freedom to come to Florence in the first place) to Hong Kong of all places with a new love, a new job and a new life. And who you miss terribly.
Time passes so quickly here - I have never been this busy in my life. I also have never been this happy. One thing leads to the next and even when there are walls - as there are always in this city (stone, political, cultural, …….) - the most difficult city in Italy to get anything done (or so I’m told) I am learning the biggest lesson of my life. Finally. To let go. To have no expectations except that you can have no expectations. That you go full force ahead with all the flexibility in the world. That’s what Italy teaches you. Aaron and I are building something….. not simply to be putting on plays….. but we go to meetings with the understanding that we are building an institution…… and that’s an amazing vision to walk around with. Especially in a city where everyone says this is impossible. That the government would only get in our way, not help us. That nothing ever gets done here. And yet, we go forward as if none of that is true. And we speak at small political functions (see photos) and have a friend in the mayors office who has been - truly - a godsend for our theatre as well as my journey with my permesso (my permission to stay in this country - that has been another lesson of life, veramente! Months and months of hitting my head against more walls, Aaron and I running around on his motorino to this office and that only to find out we are being sent for no reason, Filippo (my very talented attorney-musician-kindest-person-you-will- ever-know-and-BOY-is-Elia-lucky-to-have-him friend) working with me to write a contract where I now “officially” work for FITC (Florence International Theatre Company) as if I didn’t already know that from 18 hour days I often spend trying to put everything together, and now…. all the paper work for the permesso to be changed from a “permesso studio” to a “permesso autonomo” is sent in “correctly” (which means it’s been stamped a billion times) and we wait, with all the assurances in the world it will work and none of us actually believe it to be true (why should we when we’ve been through months of each step being “the” step only to find out that not only isn’t it the step, but the “expert” who “knows all about this area” was completely wrong and 3 months later when your journey takes you back to her office she is contradicting herself and asking you why you didn’t work faster, don’t you know there is a deadline?????). And we go, each day, forward riding around on Aaron’s motorino (Tamara took a picture and I will send it when I get it from her) to one meeting after the next for FITC and work all hours (even when we no longer have a theatre - which at this moment is true for the third time (re-read Permesso rant for a similar sense of it) and which for some reason I think is an incredible blessing which is why we still take meetings and give interviews for newspapers and finish our website and are launching it tomorrow -
(it is now time to visit it! Let me know what you think!!!)
and I wonder — how did this happen? And, even if it all falls — which it won’t — I like who I am becoming….. who I am accumulating to in order to be a good Artistic Director and partner and actress and writer and director and marketing executive and development director and press officer while also becoming, lest we forget, a professoressa of writing and dramatic arts (next spring).
This is simply to say that I want to tell you everything…… to share all all the stories that I am so privileged to experience every day…… and that I want to communicate this phase, I want to mark it in writing before it passes to the next….. so here, in this moment, I only have time to bookmark what I hope to articulate better soon. Because I haven’t even mentioned the fact that my life has now become a “live” radio show - “Florence International Theatre Company’s Radio Hour presents - ‘The Florence Chronicles’ - with the swing jazz tones of The Cotton Olives.” Being developed slowly in this absolute dive of a place called “BeBop” where the toilets (well the holes where there is a door) smell so badly that the Consul General of that very large country many people are afraid of said to my very demur friend Mary Jane who should NEVER be exposed to such pollution when coming to see me do anything ever again - “You should use the bathrooms in (place name of country here) THIS is nothing.” But since you want to gag when you go back there, next time Aaron and I are showing up early with rubber gloves and bleach and scrubbing the place down…… because this is ITALY and NOT a third world country and we have cleaning products here! Ah! the life of Artistic Directorship! (we want our audience to be able to relieve themselves without hating us).
So all that is to say that we are on chapter three this month - July 1st. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I’ll also let you know how it all works out with the theatre space….. cross your fingers for us this week ragazzi….. something’s in the air which I absolutely can’t say anything about because I am as superstitious as the next thespian…. but have no doubt you’ll hear about it soon!
So…… that’s the news from Lake Wobegone…… Or, more rightly put, the Arno River.
Buona note tutti. Mi mancate sempre, ma sono molto felice qui.
Bari
