I don’t believe it’s possible to teach “things”, nor to have the “secret” of doing so. In the end “things” are their own teacher and students learn directly from “things”. The most one can do is to prepare the ground so that this takes place. In fact if someone claims me as his “maestro”, I feel embarrassed. “Speak low if you speak love” Theatre is the fruit of a coming together of people. Bergman, again. I’d add …by chance and unpredictably.

John Wayne: "Talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much."

When minds and personalities meet, there’s just one barrier to get over. Change. It can be very costly. It’s not enough to be on stand-by. A wave passes and provokes a response; someone has something to tell, someone else listens. Many things are well-known, full stop: especially to our own special demon.

“pp.vv. e qui caschca l’asino! pistole, proiettili e V2!” Totò _ I due marescialli.

There should be no such thing as “acting”. One has to be serious in order to be taken seriously. Those who “act”, whether in their own lives or in the theatre are like those people who use baby-language with babies and also with themselves. They carry a barrier around with them.

In one’s dealings with others, there are many things that are unavoidable. The theatre is no exception to the rule. It entails all the positive and negative aspects of involvement with others and with life in general: loss and gain, insistent demands and availability. All, however, as in other artistic disciplines, in a condensed, super-economical form. Aesthetics imply perception.

Gurdieff: “total shittiness”.

The words “art” and “artist” should be used in silence, if at all.

Operating in an artistic discipline (according to Jean Renoir père) does not involve inventing a sort of fantastic parallel world. Absolute shittiness: one can’t “produce” life. A production/show should flash by like a bullet. Since it is life condensed, one cannot ‘produce’ it.

Feigning, acting and unimaginative manipulation are what Peter Brook calls deadly theatre. Operating in an artistic discipline involves responsibility. It’s the key to opening the Rear Window, as in Hitchcock.

It’s useless to repeat, “ti amo, ti amo ti amo” if your body-language tells another story/ if your actions belie you. Emotions must be manifest in actions, otherwise all we have are Words, words, words (Mina). I don’t believe in a theatre of words: chips chips chips.

Plin, plon, plan and a crazy text transform emotion into sentimentality. Opera. A pleasant experience, they tell me. Verdi is quite another thing.

Creating theatre is to be attuatori. In Spanish actuar means actuate, activate, make an event perceptible and definitive. “What’s done, can’t be undone.”

Forcing actors to wander among Roman ruins, prospective back-cloths, mobile devices… Surface constrictions are OK but either they correspond to an interior scene, or it’s mere background, limbo, decoration, nothingness. I love Gaudì. If he hadn’t been killed under a tram, he might well have put wheels under the Sagrada Familia.

Totò: “ma mi faccia il piacere!”

“Close the gate!” John Wayne in Cowboys.