"Do not forget the South, go, try to know it and love its drama, visit my Melfi, my Basilicata..." Mariano Dolci never forgot these words of his grandfather, statesman Francesco Saverio Nitti. Indeed, as he himself confesses in Massimiliano Troiani's documentary film "Villa Nitti" (2023), "there are strong memories and ties associated with Basilicata, particularly with Maratea and the stately family residence overlooking the sea in Acquafredda." Mariano Dolci died last November at the age of 88, and his passing has been passed over in complete silence in Basilicata. Yet he was one of the greatest performers of our Puppet Theatre, whose career, spanning more than fifty years, spanned the professional and social stages, from children's theatre to theatre in vulnerable settings, with a particular focus on education and mental health. His life changed when, in Rome, in his twenties and a mathematics teacher, he began attending the company of the great visionary and pioneer of Animated Theatre, Otello Sarzi. This encounter was decisive in making him leave school and pursue the allure of the "casotto," the mobile miniature stage, and his wooden creatures. In the late 1960s, he arrived in Reggio Emilia and there, thanks to Mayor Renzo Bonazzi and Councilor Loretta Giaroni, he became the only puppeteer employed in this capacity by an Italian municipality. In contact with Loris Malaguzzi, an enlightened pedagogue and promoter of an innovative educational philosophy, Mariano Dolci worked in the primary schools of Reggio (and beyond, holding seminars and workshops abroad as well), developing his own technique and artistic-pedagogical method as a true master of puppetry, so much so that he was even cited in Gianni Rodari's famous text "Grammar of Fantasy." Also appreciated by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, his Teatro di Figura synthesised logical thinking, imagination, and rare manual skills; his masks and characters seemed to have souls instead of wood. In his view, a puppet should never be merely entertainment or fun, but also a tool capable of restoring children's creativity and helping them regain "a hundred languages." "A puppet," he maintained, "shouldn't just be used to make people laugh with a cudgel, but can also give voice to poetry and thought: from Mayakovsky to García Lorca, from Brecht to Rodari, through the stories of children themselves." Mariano Dolci's life was not only about the imagination, the poetic thought of animated wooden figures, but also about all the beautiful and tragic events of his family, who, we recall, were exiled in France for over twenty years during Fascism. "I was 18 months old," he recounted in a 2019 interview with the monthly magazine A rivista, "when my mother Luigia Nitti left us, giving birth to my sister Antonella. Upon her death, my father Gioacchino, who like my grandfather Francesco was also a political refugee, was warned that he would soon be subject to expulsion from France, where I was born. In 1939, he left for Argentina, entrusting my sister and me to the Nittis. I spent my entire childhood and adolescence with my maternal grandparents, so I was raised on bread and anti-fascism." In the 1960s in Rome, Mariano Dolci frequented anarchists; his militancy in the libertarian movement and his friendship with a "charismatic leader" like Armando Borghi led him to the editorial staff of "Umanità Nova," the movement's historic newspaper. "When Borghi," he would say, "discovered that I was Francesco Saverio Nitti's nephew, he was astonished. My grandfather, when he was prime minister, had him arrested along with another of the leading theorists of Italian anarchism, Errico Malatesta. Anarchy, yes, but even more so, anti-fascism, was the compass of Mariano Dolci's political ideas. He was convinced that "anti-fascism unites, not divides," and he added: "What worries us today are not our leaders, but the odious culture that, thanks also to their encouragement, is spreading: the loss of all identity, so that there are no longer exploited or masters, progressives or reactionaries, right-wingers or left-wingers, communists or fascists. There are only the people, the Italians, as if all Italians were equal, living in the same conditions."
Mimmo Mastrangelo
https://umanitanova.org/in-ricordo-di-mariano-dolci-burattinaio-e-pedagogista/
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Link: (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #3-26 - In memory of Mariano Dolci, puppeteer and educator (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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