Zefirelli’s whisky-scented smiles; a real man of theatre but over-laden with props: that’s how you understand that theatre is subtraction.

I could mentally replay Carmelo Bene’s Macbeth, with just him on stage.

Filippo Crivelli, who having mastered all forms of show-business, enabled me to widen my horizons towards other fields, such as radio, television, some cinema and cartoons.

I recognize in myself a good ability to work with actors and make them realize what they’ve achieved. Being able to work well in various fields seems to me preferable to doing only one thing very well and then having to repeat oneself. As Pascal exemplifies. And also Howard Hawks.

I love dancers and dancing, but Gene Kelly rather than Roberto Bolle. I’ve never wanted to act, except on a few occasions, because I’ve a horror of repeats. Actors are true heroes in this sense. I would on the other hand like to act and be directed in a film because when it’s finished, it’s finished. I dream of a part of an old man, as hard as nails, in a film by Tarantino… or in Verdone’s first action movie. I regret not having accepted the offer to join the ELFO foundation with De Capitani and Salvatores.

With Renzo Salvi of RAI, I may have been the first person to direct a docu-fiction using electronic devices: Nostra Signora dei Trucchi. Shot completely in bvu then edited manually in 2” We realised ralenti e fondu in 1” equipment which had only just arrived in 1985. 10 weeks’ work for a sixty-minute film. It went to a festival, too. The film was polemical. As I left, I passed through the boos and whistling of the youthful audience. I never felt myself part of a youthful category, even when I was of an age to belong.

Of the hundred or so productions to my credit, I’m particularly attached to… a profane Via Crucis in Catania with 24 dancers. The text was that of the ultra conservative catholic writer, Paul Claudel. The “sound track” was by the “fundamentalist” Franz Liszt. Archbishop in tears due to the profound spirituality, (according to me neither profound nor spiritual).
To Il tempo della mente in Palermo. An ouverture by Giorgio Giorello, 8 dancers, Giorgio Gaslini at the piano and a typewriter.
To La pazienza di Sofocle con 2 mogli, to Alcina, to Daido.

These being my most recent productions, they give the sense and essence of my theatre based on nothing “material”, on the memory of Totò, on rehearsals full of invention and “improvisation”, on dancing even in the absence of dancing. I’ve invented a laboratory in Milan Conservatory where I don’t teach, I set an example. The laboratory is called LIMES, that is to say FRONTIER. However its aim is to break through the bounderies which surround all the various kinds of theatrical disciplines.

It's taken me years to free myself of what I learnt from others. The best thing I'm producing now, after consuming a large part o a probable life-span.

What next? The lack of a theatre of my own has both damaged and disturbed me because my work has always been subject to the paranoia of others.