Variety

Video

Adaptation and direction: Ferdinando Ceriani
Collaboration on staging and choreography: Carla Ferraro
Assistant director: Alice Guidi
Music: Quartetto Cetra, Fred Buscaglione, Fiorenzo Carpi

May 28-29-30, 2012, 9:00 PM
LUISS Guido Carli, University Gardens, Viale Pola, 12 - Rome

Behind-the-scenes glimpses from the director

We're bringing 50 students to the stage! It's a new record for the workshop. To do this, I envision a grand tapestry of television from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, bringing back the original scripts of sketches and scenes that have become legendary. The students play characters dreamed up by Walter Chiari, Ugo Tognazzi, Raimondo Vianello, Garinei and Giovannini, Massimo Troisi, and the Cetra quartet. I remember how challenging it was at times to work on certain scenes with the students, as we just couldn't stop laughing! A grand tribute to Italian variety shows and their stars, but also a theatrical celebration for our course, which is turning 10! Cheers!

Ferdinando Ceriani

 

What if, as if by magic, we could bring together some of the great names in Italian comedy from the past century, on a stage or in a TV studio? Some are our contemporaries, like Greg and Lillo, Franca Valeri, Anna Marchesini, Tullio Solenghi, and Massimo Lopez (the legendary “Trio”). Others are still close to us, such as Massimo Troisi, Vittorio Caprioli, Ugo Tognazzi, Raimondo Vianello, Walter Chiari, Dino Verde, and the Quartetto Cetra. And then there are those who are perhaps already more distant, like Macario, Mico Galdieri, Garinei and Giovannini, Fred Buscaglione, and Achille Campanile. These are the stars of the show celebrating ten years of the LUISS Guido Carli theater course. My collaborators, the students, and I had a blast bringing them back under the “lights of Varietà,” that classic genre that originated in the cabaret chantant of Naples and Rome in the early 19th century and to which all modern Italian entertainment owes a debt. “The variety actor must be able to do everything!” the great English actor Laurence Olivier explained to his students. This maxim, recalled at the start of the show by one of the students, serves as the starting point for the lineup of “Varietà, prove per uno spettacolo lungo cent’anni” (Variety: Rehearsals for a Show a Century Long). The show is packed with sketches, comedic bits, farces, character pieces, and parodies, interspersed with music, songs, and dance numbers, all within a completely free dramaturgical structure, just like the “varietà” of yesteryear. And that's how we journey far and wide, with chronological leaps that push the boundaries, through some of the most joyful moments of Italian entertainment. From cabaret (“La smorfia”, “Cahiers de notes”) to variety shows (“Zà Bum”, “Un, due, tre”, “Oh quante belle figlie Madama Doré”), from black-and-white television (“Carosello”) to color (“Tastomatto”), and even to the radio broadcasts of recent years (“Seiunozero”). This is a tribute to our variety show stars, celebrating together the 10-year milestone of the theater course I direct. For this occasion, I’d like to dedicate the show to two people who are no longer with us but were close to me and to all of us: Angelo Guidi, who co-directed the course with me for six years, and Maria Guglielmino, who attended as a student.

Students | Leading actors

• Elisabetta Abelardi
• Lucrezia Alberti
• Diletta Aliotta
• Kety Andguladze
• Francesca Beniamino
• Flavio Bernardini
• Ambra Borriello
• Erica Bucci
• Giacomo Bucciarelli
• Raffaella Caravatta
• Valentina Cascapera
• Bruno Catania
• Giulia Ceccarelli
• Chiara Cerini
• Simone Corbisiero
• Giovanni Cordì
• Francesca De Rosa
• Andrea Mattia De Stasi
• Antonio Delli Compagni
• Filippo Di Iorio
• Giorgia Draisci
• Eugenio Durante
• Gianluca Fasano
• Carlo Ferrero
• Alessandra Gesualdi
• Agnese Gorgoglione
• Mariachiara Gramegna
• Imane Jalmous
• Federica Lerario
• Laura Lisanti
• Federico Yang Maoloni
• Gabriella Marcelja
• Giorgio Marchegiano
• Leonello Marracini
• Teresa Mattioli
• Giulia Mazzara
• Federica Monda
• Maria Murrone
• Simone Oddo
• Mariangela Peci
• Pennetta Margherita
• Popolo Silviarita
• Presicce Deneuve
• Mariaenrica Pugliese
• Chiara Puma
• Giulia Rosato
• Matteo Santilli
• Elena Saracino
• Martina Vairo
• Giovanni Visaggio