Partner Riccardo Bini
Queer Places:
Associazione Santacristina Centro Teatrale, Frazione Santa Cristina, 67, 06024 Gubbio PG
Luca Ronconi (March 8, 1933 – February 21, 2015) was a theater and opera director. In sixty years of activity, with more than two hundred directions, he has reinvented the theater by exploring dramaturgical structures, with the choice of famous and unknown texts, ancient and contemporary, of a theatrical, literary and non-fiction nature. He has always sought an anti-naturalistic and anti-psychological acting, expanding the time and space of the representation, with the creation of extended durations and impressive scenic arrangements. Engaged in important cultural institutions and in the training field, Ronconi he directed the Venice Biennale (1975-76), founded the Prato Laboratory (1976-79), was artistic director of the permanent theater of Turin (1988-93), of Rome (1994-98) and of the Piccolo di Milan (1999-2015). He taught at the Silvio d'Amico Academy, at the Teatro Stabile school in Turin, at the Piccolo Teatro school, which now bears his name, and in 2002 he founded the Santacristina Theater Center in Umbria together with Roberta Carlotto.
Luca Ronconi was born in Susa (Tunisia) on March 8, 1933. Graduated from the Silvio d'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome (1953), Ronconi made his first direction with The Good Wife (1963), after having worked for ten years as an actor. International success came with Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso (1969), in the version by Edoardo Sanguineti, constructed with simultaneous scenes for a traveling audience (version for TV in 1975). Among the most important, these followed: Orestea (1972), seven hours long, an insight into the origins of tragedy; Utopia (1976), montage of five texts by Aristophanes presented on the Giudecca; Le Baccanti (1978), with the extraordinary performance of Marisa Fabbri alone on stage, at the Magnolfi in Prato; Ignorabimus by Arno Holz (1986), twelve hours with a scenography of concrete, bricks and marble, an initial reflection on a 'theatre of science'; The Last Days of Humanity by Karl Kraus (1990), with the actions of over sixty actors on mobile practicables at the Lingotto in Turin. In 1996 he directed the Ugly mess of via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda, in which the characters, reflecting themselves in the multiplicity of narrative points of view, speak of themselves in the third person and give life to a 'story' that presents itself as an alternative form to the typically theatrical dialogue. In the following years: Lolita (screenplay by Vladimir V. Nabokov, 2001), with an ironic film set staging; Candle maker by Giordano Bruno (2001); What Maisie Knew by Henry James (2002), with Mariangela Melato's great performance as an actress; Infinities (2002), from five essays on the logical-mathematical principles of the concept of infinity commissioned to the astrophysicist John D. Barrow; Le rane di Aristofane (2002), at the Greek Theater in Syracuse, with the inclusion of portraits of politicians which caused strong controversy on the part of the current government; Amor in the mirror by Giovan Battista Andreini (2002), in Ferrara, in front of the Palazzo dei Diamanti, on a surface of 60 m of mirrors. For the Turin Winter Olympics (2006), in collaboration with Walter Le Moli, he created the Progetto Domani, five shows on universal themes, from science to politics, from war to the economy (Troilus and Cressida, Trilogy of War , Lo mirror of the devil , The silence of the communists , Biblioetica ). In the following years he staged Odyssey double return ( Ithaca by Botho Strauss and The Cave of the Nymphs from Homer to Porphyry); two Shakespeares, A Midsummer Night's Dream (2008) and The Merchant of Venice (2009); Just the end of the world (2009) by Jean-Luc Lagarce; Trial of Nora , from Henrik Ibsen's Doll's House (2010); two texts by the young Argentine playwright Rafael Spregelburd ( Modesty , 2011, and Panic , 2013); Santa Giovanna dei macelli (2012), first experience with a work by Bertolt Brecht; Looking for an author. Study on Six Characters (2012) by Luigi Pirandello; Pornography by Witold Gombrowicz (2013); Dance macabre by August Strindberg (2014). His latest theatrical work was Lehman Trilogy (2015) by Stefano Massini, one hundred and sixty years of history of capitalism, told through the events of the Lehman family.
Riccardo Bini is an actor with a long professional and human partnership with Luca Ronconi, a relationship that without melancholy, he himself defines "a splendid journey full of problems. We have shared a thousand washing machines but faced many obstacles". Bini is an interpreter of almost all Ronconian shows, from Strano Interlude from 85 to Pornography. Ronconi, struggling with poor health, had the desire, confessed to some friends, to "adopt" Bini. Bini said: "It was Luca's idea perhaps to simplify my life, perhaps because it was good for him too". They met in 1977 at the Prato laboratory. Bini was a kid looking for a theatrical identity. "For me it was wonder, especially compared to the school of Gassman and the Academy I attended. Then after a five-year break we met again and I was no longer the pupil, a personal relationship was also born. Perhaps because we recognized each other: we both had cumbersome mothers, absent fathers... a bit orphans. When I met him for the second time, at the age of 25. I offered myself as an assistant and there were some of his best things starting with Ignorabimus, and then the rehearsals for Pornography, despite some very hard moments. Because Luca was afraid of the outcome of the shows and was ruthless. At the time of Makropulos with Mariangela Melato he left us on the last day of rehearsals saying "put on a horrendous show". Then, like all his works, he went well and then, in those days, he slept for a week in a row and was happy and was already thinking about the next one".
Ronconi died in Milan on February 21, 2015. Ronconi left part of the Center of Santa Cristina, in Umbria, to Bini. "Santa Cristina was Luca, a great thing, who had paid for himself with the direction of the opera. He used the money buying trees and land for a pharaonic thing in a peasant place. I will try to preserve it, but I don't even know if I will be able to afford it."
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