#5 Getting back to Filumena

While working on the play 'Filumena Marturano', we have been pondering the value of tradition and the place we want it to hold in our theaters. Modes of behavior that may have become obsolete, structures we have either freed ourselves from or are striving to do so, and so on. We've also considered the value of ancient theatrical forms, the customs of old theaters and scenic events, and traditional dramatic scores. How do we relate to them? How do we organize their reception? How do we carry out meaningful operations with them? This production of 'Filumena' has revolved, in part, around these questions. Our conviction is that we cannot simply ignore tradition, nor can we merely apply a redemptive censorship to it, nor assume it uncritically. Tradition offers us unravelled bundles, bequeaths us questions and possibilities yet to be explored, and passes on to us the struggles that must continue, crossing through us like a lightning bolt stretched between yesterday and tomorrow. This fifth crossroads is a juxtaposition of fragments around this question.

"'Only after having studied, delved into, and respected tradition do we have the right to give it a kick and set it aside, but always with the awareness that we owe it, at the very least for helping us clarify our ideas. Naturally, if we remain anchored in the past, the life that continues becomes life that stops, but if we use tradition as a springboard, it's evident that we'll jump much higher than if we start from the ground. And furthermore... it seems to me that there's no one who truly starts from the ground."

Eduardo De Filippo

"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants. We can see more, and farther than they, not because of the keenness of our sight or the height of our bodies, but because we are raised by their great height."

Joan de Salisbury

"Without past or future, Arendt suggested, the present becomes opaque, always identical to itself, without the possibility of knowing what it means to innovate or preserve, to speak of all that we miss in the present, to speak of the people who are no longer here or those who are yet to come. Perhaps this is the reason why Françoise Collin affirmed that the common world is an act and not a fact, as the world designates both the inheritance to be received, shared, and transmitted, and the plurality of those with whom we share responsibility, and at times, joy."

Fina Birulés

"It doesn't make much sense to view tradition as an immutable and permanent essence of one's identity. The richness of tradition comes precisely from the accuracy, creativity, and consequences of the operations we carry out within it. These paths can be explored from almost all positions of power and powerlessness."

Raül Garrigasait

"The contemporary is the one who disassembles the vertebrae of his time (or has at least perceived the fault or the breaking point), the one who makes of this fracture the place of an appointment and a meeting between times and generations."

Giorgio Agamben