Pippo Delbono

Pippo Delbono, author, actor, and director, was born in Varazze in 1959. He begins training in traditional theatre, then, in Denmark, he studies the principles of oriental theatre, through a rigorous work on body and voice. Later, in Germany, he’s invited by Pina Bausch to follow her work. At the beginning of the 80’s he founds the Compagnia Pippo Delbono, creating most of his works with them, from Il Tempo degli Assassini (1987) to Orchids (2013). He does not stage plays but, rather, total creations, devised with a stable group of actors whose number has grown through the years. The encounter with socially marginalised people determines a turning point in his poetical research: that’s how Barboni (1997) was born. Some of these actors – among them Bobò, deaf-mute, who had been kept in an asylum in Aversa, near Naples, for forty-five years – have kept working with the company and are still a central part of this experience.

The works that followed — La rabbia dedicated to Pasolini, Guerra, Esodo, Gente di plastica, Urlo, Il silenzio, Questo buio feroce, La menzogna, Racconti di giugno —like the ones before, have been performed worldwide in more than fifty countries, in theatres and festivals, including the Festival d’Avignon (where almost all of the company’s creations were presented), Barcelona’s Grec, Theater Spektakel in Zurich, the Venice Biennale, etc. Several theatres, including the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris, have shown retrospectives of his work and co-produced his creations in the past years. Enrico V — his only creation based on an existing play – is the only Italian production of Shakespeare that has ever been invited to perform at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Pippo Delbono has also been investigating the language of film for many years now. In 2003, following a tour in Israel and Palestine, he shoots Guerra, presented at the Venice International Film Festival and winner of a David Di Donatello as best documentary. His second film, Grido (2006), has been shown at the Rome International Film Festival. In 2009 he directs La Paura, filmed entirely with a cellular phone, printed on film by the Bologna Cinematheque, and presented in the official selection at the 2009 Locarno Film Festival, alongside a retrospective of his works, including film versions of Il Silenzio and Questo Buio Feroce. In June 2013 his film Amore Carne (grand prize at the Nyon Film Festival, in Switzerland) was distributed in Italy and France, after a preview at the the 68th Venice International Film Festival in 2011, in the section “Orizzonti”. His short film Blue Sofa, co-directed with Lara Fremder and Giuseppe Baresi, was awarded the grand prize at the Clermont Ferrand festival. Sangue, his latest film, was the only Italian movie presented at the 66th Festival of Locarno in August 2013, where it won the International Federation of Film Societies prize. As an actor, he appears in Io Sono L’Amore by Luca Guadagnino, Io e Te by Bernardo Bertolucci, Goltzius and the Pelican Company by Peter Greenaway, Henry by Yolande Moreau, Un Chateau en Italie by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Pulce Non C’è by Giuseppe Bonito, Transeurope Hotel by Luigi Cinque, Cha Cha Cha by Marco Risi, and other movies. For the Teatro Sperimentale of Spoleto, he directed the opera Studio per Obra Maestra in 2007, and for the Teatro San Carlo of Naples, in 2012, he directed Cavalleria Rusticana. In 2011 he devises Rosso Bordeaux, presented in Place de la Comédie in Bordeaux as part of Evento, festival directed by Michelangelo Postoletto. In the same year, Residenz Theater in Munich calls him as guest director: Erpressung (blackmail) is the first creation with actors that are not part of his company. It premiered in Munich on January 14 2012 and has become part of the theater’s repertory. With the violinist Alexander Balanescu he conceives the concert Amore Carne. He publishes Barboni – Pippo Delbono’s Theatre with Ubulibri. For Actes Sud editions he publishes Mon Theatre (also published in Romania with the title Teatrul Meu), Récits de Juin and Regards. For the editor Les Solitaires Intempestifs Le Corps de L’Acteur; for Punto Aparte El Teatro de la Rabia; for Garzanti Racconti Di Giugno and for Barbès Corpi Senza Menzogna and Dopo La Battaglia – poetical/political writings. Ma Mère et les Autres, a new book Delbono is writing for Actes Sud, is also the title of an exhibition-performance that will be presented in Bayonne in November 2013. Sangue – dialogue between a buddhist artist and an ex-terrorist is due to be published by Edizioni Clichy in Florence. He has been awarded, among other prizes, the special Ubu prize for Barboni, the Critic’s Prize for Guerra, the Olympic Prizes for Theatrical Innovation for Gente Di Plastica and Urlo, and in Wroclaw, Poland, in 2009, he received the Europe Prize New Theatrical Realities. Dopo la Battaglia, with the participation of the violinist Alexander Balanescu and the Paris Opera Étoile Marie-Agnès Gillot, won the 2011 Ubu prize as best play. His latest creation, Orchids, premiered in May at Luciano Pavarotti Theatre in Modena as part of the 9th edition of Vie Scena Contemporanea Festival.

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