Salvo Piparo, keeper of the ‘cunto’ and storyteller of Sicily
Salvo Piparo is an actor from Palermo who brings to the stage the so-called ‘cunto’, one of most traditional Sicilian storytelling techniques. With his theater he guards the island’s memories. Able to mix comedy and brutal realism, he speaks to society and drags his art among the people with the aim of breaking down that fourth wall that has always separated actors and spectators. Sicilian Secrets interviewed him.
Q: How did your acting career start?
A: My career came about from realizing that I didn’t want to be an actor. At the same time, however, there was a need, that is, to find something I was missing, something that had to do with both the stage and the audience. The stage as much as the audience fascinated me, I liked being in between these two worlds that are separated by what we can call the ‘fourth wall’ but which is not good for either the actors or the audience. Tearing it down is almost a necessity, it was the necessity I felt. After making a personal journey, after looking inside myself, I realized that I did not want to be an actor but to tell stories at a time when no one was telling them anymore and everyone, instead, was an actor!
Today everything is ‘storytelling’, it is a much abused word. But the way of telling that I felt was something that had to do with my being Sicilian. When I realized that I wanted to tell about my land, I realized that I wanted to be a storyteller. I began to fall in love with being able to write a story and then tell it, it appealed to me more than having a script in my hand, and so I began to experiment…
Q: Salvo Piparo and the ‘cunto’: where did the decision to make yourself a proponent for this kind of theater come from?
A: I started experimenting on myself with what moved me and what moved people. When I discovered that it was really the storytelling that aroused this in me, I focused on the ‘cunto’, which is the most significant part of traditional Sicilian storytelling. I chose to work on something that had gone into oblivion, began to rework it, and made it my own.
Q: How does a Salvo Piparo’s show come about?
A: Any show comes about from the urgency of wanting to communicate something. Maybe I start from an anecdote, a story…everything is mixed with current events. Ideas and inspirations come from what is happening around us that are inevitably linked to history. After all, man has been pondering the same problems for centuries, albeit in different ways!
Q: What is the professional experience you remember most fondly?
A: Definitely every time I staged something that had to do with social theater, even if it was more reflective and perhaps with less funny stories. We have told Rosalia by experimenting with the role of the plague year after year in different ways: the plague can be ‘dressed’ according to many patterns. From the indifference of those who come from the sea, the omertà of the Mafia, and so on. Exorcising this ‘plague’ has been for me a personal growth dictated also by what I have tried to convey to the audience, which is a desire for redemption and to open one’s eyes, to wake up and stop being titled by clichés. We Sicilians know how to go beyond that.
Q: Salvo Piparo’s theater makes Sicily the centerpiece, but what is the bond with your land?
A: It is a bond similar to that of a son who somehow treats his land like a woman, with a sacred respect for Mother Earth. However, a mother who is not always sweet but can also be violent, full of contradictions. I live my land with love and distance so as not to be swallowed up by the ‘Sicily’ cliché. Our island deserves to be told in a different way by each of us, every Sicilian should tell it – for better or for worse – in an extraordinary way.
Q: How important do you think it is to preserve the Sicilian language and keep it alive through theater?
A: For me it is fundamental, it is the real fulcrum on which my way of doing theater revolves in which a lot starts from the language. I lived in Milan, I was snubbed, I was pointed at and looked down upon as a southerner who had to feel guilty because he had a marked inflection. All this, on the contrary, can be a strength because in contemporary globalization, I believe that every accent is fun and necessary, it is up to us to modulate it and make it a language capable of conveying anger when it needs to be angry, love when it needs to be loving. Feelings walk through our languages, and listening to the mixture of them is very interesting for the audience to hear.
Q: Is there a place in the world where you would like to take one of your shows?
A: I took one of my stories, “Il cunto della città Presepe”, to Jerusalem and it was an incredible moment, confronting the reality that is lived there was necessary for my personal journey. A land that should be a place of love unfortunately sees peoples at war. Theater needs to go back to being itinerant, many shows were born and immediately die, every place is necessary for theater and vice versa, we need to bring thoughtful shows around.
I acted in the most degraded neighborhoods of the city of Palermo, and I found endless happiness in being able to narrate in front of certain eyes that looked at me as if they had never seen or heard. It was liberating both for me and for those who were present there at that moment. Theater must go to those corners of the world where there is a greater hunger for communication, because communication can be a form of affection and kindness.
Q: Is there a memory related to one of your shows that you would like to tell us?
A: I have a recurring memory: in several of my shows I have involved people on current events, and I believe that this should never stop happening so that theater has a social function and not just entertainment. If we can break down this fourth wall and be one with the people, I will always be there cheering for the kind of theater that unites the stage and the audience. I fell in love with theater by being on the audience’s side, and I believe there is a balance we can all hold together: audience on one side and actors on the other, in the name of a better community, because community is also improved by feeling part of the same theater.
Q: What are your future projects?
A: My projects look at an experimentation of tradition that communicates with our everyday life. This is my task and I will try to do it the best I can. There are a thousand ways to experiment, some stimulate me more and some less, but in the end the most difficult thing is being able to be heard, especially by other generations. And we should have the ability to succeed.
