I think about joy as something that has to do with the exit from the fight, from pain and darkness. I think about deserts, about prisons, I think about the people who escape from those prisons, I think about flowers.
Pippo Delbono

Actor and director that doesn’t follow the rules, Pippo Delbono is one of the Italian most popular artists abroad. Moreover, he is a famous film director. Over the years, a large audience has gathered in the theatres to see his shows, which have been hosted in the most important European festivals. Since his debut on the stage, Delbono has created a very expressive theatrical language, which is able to combine the strictness of the “dance in theatre” with a powerful visionary potential. An experience that is highly intertwined with his biography. The thirty-year long journey of the artist is a journey that starts from his private disease (the feeling of a diversity, the painful processing of mourning, the discovery of HIV) to turn into means of knowledge.
This book is the result of an over twenty-year long talk, in which the eye often prevails over the word. The book takes the reader through one of the most fascinating artistic adventures of our times. It is a journey inside the artist’s journey.

Gianni Manzella is a writer, essayist, an undisciplined scholar of contemporary theatre and so on. He has written and edited books concerning the contemporary world. For many years, he has written articles about theatre for the Italian daily newspaper “Il manifesto”. He created “art’o”, a magazine about culture and the policy of performing arts.