Lessons of Florence

How are things in Florence you might ask?  Well….. things are good….. unbelievably good in the I’m-on-the-absolute-edge-of-the-edge-of-my-life-and-I-can-feel-it-cutting-into-the-soles-of-my-feet….sort of thing.  I thought I was here a year ago.  When the heat of summer and the desperation of Florence hung over me.  When FITC finished its first season with a negative balance in the bank, hopes for a future were dimming and the building of the soon-to-explode problems between the co-Artistic Directors were being unknowingly planted in the hot terrain of the Mediterranean sun on cobblestone and asphalt streets.  THEN I thought that I was on the knife’s edge.  I thought it couldn’t get more frightening financially.  I thought I would never “figure it out” or come to fully realize whatever the “It” was that brought me to Florence.  Yet…..I made it through another year and a successful full season at FITC.  Summer is here, there’s a positive balance in the FITC account, I’m now Producing Artistic Director with a strong core of people behind me and a fabulous season planned ahead of me.  And… again… there’s that “yet.”

Yet is it possible to be even more on the knife’s edge?  I never knew there could be an edge to the edge….. but I’m on it.  While FITC has a little money in the bank, a stronger structure, a full season planned and….. we are about to announce what I am hoping might become one of the most exciting study abroad opportunities for theatre majors in the world as well as some really cool stuff for the tourist market….. I have no employment whatsoever.  The job I had which hardly paid all the bills – teaching creative writing/acting at a local study abroad program – is gone for the fall, might come back in the spring, but that has put ‘yours truly’ in a very interesting position.  Just as certain concepts are edging toward reality…. Meaning financial as well as actual….. Ms. “I want to move to Florence and find out who I am in this world” may not be able to stay long enough to actually see them realized.

Or…. She will.  Who’s to say?  Only time will tell.

Cial Ragazzi!  I have to get back to work….. It’s the end of July and August is almost here… which means I won’t be able to get much done until September 8th….

Ah Italia!

I thought – just for fun – I would share a bit of a letter I recently wrote to Christopher Durang’s literary agent in New York.

Dear Mr. Durang’s Agent:

Bari

Needless to say…. He declined and suggested I deal with the SIAE.  Such an American answer!  Since I sent this letter, I found out the SIAE a privately owned organization (the word mafia would work at this moment) sanctioned by the government and – if I wanted to use recorded music registered with them – I would have to pay an additional 33% of my box office.  Which would be a total of 43% of the gross of our production.  (This is why, when I did “The Butterfingers Angel….” And wanted Christmas music in the lobby we couldn’t do it and I made the cast stand in the lobby and sing live instead.  I just didn’t know it was for 33%!  I honestly thought it was 3% which I also thought was insane for lobby music!)

Walking the streets of Florence to try to keep all this going…. When you simply keep hitting walls as to why you can’t…. can often be slightly frustrating.  But ragazzi, you know what I’m going to do about it?

Succeed anyway!

Why not?  Apparently, according to my friend who runs the theatre we work in…. we just do “Baby With the Bathwater” and any other registered play with the SIAE we want and then when they ask us for the ticket sales total we tell them the truth – tickets were valued at 3euro each.  Because you see on that production we really were holding a raffle!  It took place during intermission and the play was simply a nice thing around it.  The raffle ticket is 11euros and the ticket is 3.

So my friends…..

We continue!

Tanti baci, e buon lavoro!

From one moment to the next Florence is full of surprises…. None of them at all surprising… but they exist all the same.  Let me explain:

One week and two days ago, my heart sinking, and my hopes dashing and crashing around me in beautifully Tuscan-lit slow motion…. I left the Direzione Sviluppo Economico with Trui…… not sure if we would be able to attempt to do a very viable, probably successful project that would bring money to FITC, bring an addition to the offerings here for international visitors and give visibility to our work in the tourist market.  For reasons which sadden me immensely – basically the lessons learned here of not telling anyone anything until it is too late for them to do anything to stop you from having your own small success (because even then they will do whatever they can to take it from you) – I will not tell you as of yet what it is.  When we are ready you will know.  Sorry…. I am becoming a bit “Florentine” …. For survival.

Anyway…. One week and two days after our meeting with the very nice Dott. Lotti I returned with Rene (our Academic Advisor for the Theatre Arts Immersion Course and Vice President of our Association).  Dott. Lotti had – surprisingly but also not – done exactly what he said he would do…. He looked into the challenges of our project proposals.  He had two other colleagues in the meeting and we took another hour to sit there, go over everything in as much detail as we could and determine all the challenges the Florentine laws and regulations proposed to what we wanted to do.  Then we talked about how to get around them.

You see… THAT’s Italy.  You want to know what it’s really like here?  How to really be in Italy and experience her intimately?  You can drink all the Chianti you want, drive through the hills of olive groves and along the cost of the Amalfi.  But until you sit in a government office with three knowledgeable men who look at your project from every which way – have decided they want to support it – but see the only way to support it is to figure out how to get around the law… and there is always a way to do that…. You’ve not really had an Italian experience.

One could argue “what a waste of time”…. And one would be right.  There is so much energy, time and talent wasted in trying to constantly figure out how to get around things here.  That’s why nothing gets done.  That’s why people give up.  That’s why Italians are among the most pessimistic people I have ever met in my life.  However… the part that was surprising…. Was that we sat there and did it.  We found possible solutions and when we left… the door closed behind us and we were half way down the stairs… I said to Rene, to make sure I didn’t miss anything with my limited Italian:  “They didn’t say no did they?  I mean that was a “yes” wasn’t it?”

And Rene said: “They didn’t say no.”

So this is now my job: put together a very specific detailed-as-possible description of the project – times, locations, people, everything…. So they can take it around and get it approved and we can move forward.

And… maybe…. We will…..

Or maybe another surprise will come around the corner.

Who knows?  Piano, Piano as the Italians like to say. (Slowly, slowly)

Now, with no doubt in my bones, I know exactly why.

“Nel ogni finestra ci sono pistoli.”

These were the words of my newest government official – Dott. Lotti of the Direzione Sviluppo Economico (office of Economic Development).  He specializes in strategizing for developing new projects, etc. for the city – under the relationship with tourism.  I had these ideas for developing some projects to bring money into FITC (and – honestly – to me as well) and since they were really quite simple I was – even with all my Florentine education – surprised at how long it took to get to a point where things were being discussed logistically instead of theoretically.  After running around the city for about three months (see description of tunnel building in April) we ended up with this sincerely nice man in a meeting which was suppose to be with his boss, but somehow someone forget to schedule the appointment into her book.  However Italy constantly teaches you that what you think you need you often don’t…. meaning meetings with people who might have passed you on to someone else instead of a meeting with this nice gentleman who gave an hour of his attention to us – to yet again explain the story of FITC, our intentions, our projects, and our relationships with the city – and for him to say two things which dropped my heart… which until that point I had been holding up with very rickety scaffolding…

First he said – “if we work with you, do these projects with you, then every other theatre association will want us to work with them as well.”

This is a perfect example of the one of the problems of Italy – or at least Florence.  This fear of others.  And - maybe - socialism/communism.  Everyone denies progress, denies advancement, discourages entrepreneurialism all in the name of “what the others will do/think/want.” Or what is “fair to the whole.”  Our reaction (Trui was with me) was that: #1 there is no other English language professional level theatre organization in Florence and #2… let them!  There are 5 million tourists and 15,000 American university students that come to this city every year.  Let other groups offer things.  Maybe the city would become more livable and enjoyable and less dangerous in the evenings.  Maybe art could – as I absolutely believe with all my bones – change things for the good here.  FITC certainly can’t and shouldn’t do it all!  But that’s not easy for an Italian to understand.  And that’s when he went on to identify another obstacle:

You want to do a package evening – theatre and a restaurant.  That might be difficult.

Difficult?  What is easier than being entertained and eating???  God knows if they’ve done anything in Florence it’s perfect the dining experience.  But here’s the rub – it’s two different categories these fall into you see – Culture and Commercial dining.  So we can’t combine them because there is no category for both.  Would you believe that in one of the most tourist-ridden places on the face of the planet they don’t have package deals?!

This – it was explained by the nice Dott. Lotti – is because of all the jealousies of the residents.  The Florentines are all watching each other to make sure that no one is doing better than they are.  This is why there are laws upon laws which restrict every little thing and which can be called upon at any time to “get” someone.  He made a movement with his hands crossing his wrists to show how chained the government workers felt by this (the irony is that the residents tell me it’s the government workers that are chaining them…. But I think Dott. Lotti – based on my experience – is not far off).  Then he moved his hands to being held up with one finger on each hand pointing at an angle downward and both thumbs facing up and said:

“Qui, a Firenze, nel ogni finestra ci sono pistoli.”

To translate that means “here in Florence, in every window there are guns”…. pointing at their neighbors, waiting for them to do something that they don’t want them to do…. Or that they resent them having.

And then his cell phone rang.  I turned to Trui and I said “this may be it. We are sitting in a meeting at the office of economic development to see how to do a simple project of benefit to the city and this very nice man is telling us there are guns waiting for us.  This is beyond my ability to push or pull or force or do anything.  I can’t change genetic fears and cultural stupidity.”

And Trui said:

“You are right.”

Then Dott. Lotti hung up, came back to us and said he wanted to see what he could find out and we should meet a week later.  I felt he meant it.  I felt he sincerely wanted to see what he could do.  If he could do something.

Then we left and I walked Trui – who I had been running around this city with for three months looking for answers to simple questions – to the corner to say good bye for the summer.   I stood there with the rickety scaffolding threatening to tumble and I wondered if I would be here in September when Trui returned from her summer vacation.  I wondered if Florence would let me find a way to stay.

Vediamo Ragazzi…. Vedremmo……