Lessons of Florence

That’s what I said to my friend Pauline at our coffee today.  That’s how I feel sometimes when I just want to add 1+1 to get 2 and keep learning that here, in Florence, you can’t do it that way.  You have to also use multiplication and division and then throw in a few fractions because they are attractive to look at and then eventually have a coffee because you’re so exhausted from all of this and don’t remember what you were trying to get to anyway so you have a great conversation about Dante and….

This is my feeling in trying to respond to the simple request of creating an international festival of arts this summer in my favorite and - in my opinion - the most beautiful piazza in Florence: Piazza Santo Spirito.  I know I am simply a straniere (foreigner) and an ignoramus artist who knows nothing about business (or so my friend and ‘advocate’ Andrea tells me constantly), but I truly believed there was a process which has been clearly laid out for many years.  Someone says “I want something” you say “okay.  Let me go and make a plan and show it to you.”  But it’s the “show it to you” part… which is difficult right now.  Well, it’s also the ‘exactly what they want’ part which is difficult too.  Well, maybe also the believing anyone is really sincere about this whole thing and maybe the truth is I’m just being used as a political or personal tool for getting certain Assessori (I guess the closest definition would be Ministers) of certain offices to pay attention to a piazza that was once not filled with quite so many drug dealers and crack heads along with their dogs and spiked hair and necklaces.  But I don’t actually, with my many, many years of being in this city (all three of them) believe that these rich men who own all the businesses in the piazza actually want to clean it up with having an international presence of art and culture.  I believe they just want to say they are cleaning it up and get their names in the paper for doing so and then they can — like so many others in this town — pat themselves on the back for actually having done nothing but it all looked nice.  Sort of like the article in “Firenze Spettacolo” which claimed I and Florence International Theatre Company was going to work with them on this.  I found that very amusing since we actually hadn’t had a conversation about it. 

But then again — I’m a straniere.  I’m told often that I simply don’t understand the way things are done here.  And I don’t.  I don’t understand a project proposal to a group of people which requires meeting each of them individually, being told a changing strategy after each encounter (“we are going to form an association with them and FITC”….. “FITC will be hired by their association”………. “we are only going to work with the richest man because he has all the money, the others have no say, they’ll do what he wants”…………. “we are only going to work with the others and the rich man will then want to get into the effort”)  So all these little strategies are going on from my ‘advocate’ Andrea who assures my protests for a simple meeting with all of them to find out who is thinking what and move forward from there are the inexperience of Florentine business culture and also because I am an artist not a business person (here in Italy artists can’t be business people…. but we’ll get into my observations for the reasons on that another time). 

Meanwhile… time is ticking, and other than the pretty article in the paper (with a picture no less!) nothing has happened.  Unless of course “nothing” also includes the hours upon hours it took to create the program proposal (which would be - frankly - HOT!), the calendar and the budget for the 72 programs in 66 days I came up with and then had Clelia translate into Italian.  Or the meetings we at FITC held to make sure we approached this project well and professionally.  Or the meetings since to figure out WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON IN THIS ALTERNATE UNIVERSE I AM LIVING IN!!!!

But then again…. sono straniere (I am a foreigner)….. and for that reason I apply my Hollywood lessons to Florence…. I don’t believe it until it happens and I’m “on the set.”  But even then….. the set could simply be a bella figura but a bruta realita’….. so to quote El Gall from our last production - “The Fantasticks!” : “we’ll see…. we’ll leave them there for awhile… then we’ll see.”

Ciao Ragazzi,
It’s fun to be so close…. and yet… so …. far……