“What happens in our lives, what must happen, for something of what we experience – a meeting, a book, a journey, a show – to touch us so deeply that it leaves a mark and becomes part of us?” With this question my meeting with 480 students began, in a beautiful theater in Emilia Romagna. The question surprised them. They were expecting a lesson on the First World War in the theater, not a journey around the world and life. From the banks of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Isonzo, to the sources of the Ganges in the Himalayan mountains, to the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean. Adventures, shipwrecks, drifts and illuminations. From water to water, from story to story, the meeting transformed into a collective and profound experience of sharing and listening.
The Courtesy of the Blind is the story of a small miracle of human and theatrical participation.
The Mediterranean is wind and saltiness, the smell of sun-baked figs; the scent of cooking, of home. Ancient and familiar voices. It is the sea of Proximity. It is Kastellorizo, the island of the film Mediterraneo: “Italians Greeks: my face my race, one face one race.” Every year, for many years, the Mediterranean continues to call me. It is a stern and generous teacher. And some time ago it gave me a lesson that I will never forget.
“Words, the right ones, the true ones, have as much power as actions.” Raymond Carver
