La faticosa messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare, 1967

La faticosa messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare (1967)

(The laborious staging of Shakespeare’s Hamlet)
cineteatrical spectacle of  Leo de Berardinis e Perla Peragallo
film operators Alberto Grifi, Mario Masini, Leo de Berardinis, Perla Peragallo
editing Leo de Berardinis e Perla Peragallo
with Leo de Berardinis e Perla Peragallo
premiere Roma, Teatro alla Ringhiera, 21 aprile 1967
main replies Ivrea, Centro Olivetti di Palazzo Canavese, 12 giugno 1967

Leo and Perla’s laborious staging: a cascade of (cinematic) light for the actor’s ghost

by Cristina Grazioli
On April 21, 1967 in Rome, at the La Ringhiera Theater, Leo De Berardinis and Perla Peragallo presented their first play, La faticosa messinscena dell’Amleto di William Shakespeare (The laborious staging of Shakespeare’s Hamlet), later part of the meaningful context of the Ivrea Conference.
Defined by the authors as “a cinetheatrical play,” it took its place clearly, starting from its intentions, within the territory of a dialogue with movie projection, fully aware of the differences that the use of film implies as a code for stage writing.
The stage set included three screens (white sheets) of different sizes, upstage and stage left and right, on which heterogeneous images were projected, drawn from a current events repertory (the White House, the Ministry) or shots – in color or black and white – of the two actors interpreting Hamlet (doing all the parts, in costume or everyday dress), as well as objects, neon signs and advertising. The films, initially shot by Alberto Grifi and Mario Masini, were later completed and edited by Leo and Perla. Read morere…

Description of the spectacle

by Pierpaolo Cesarano
The debut of the pair De Berardinis-Peragallo took place at the Ringhiera on April 21, 1967, in Rome’s Santa Maria in Trastevere district. On the stage were three screens, each with its projector, amplifier, two speakers and a turntable, which played the most disparate music, from Verdi to Gianni Morandi, a Farfisa synthesizer, an iron crown and two painted veils. Leo de Berardinis, 27 years old, had returned from a long acting apprenticeship with Carlo Quartucci. Perla Peragallo, a few years younger, had attended Alessandro Fersen’s theater school and possessed a natural dramatic talent, mixed with a deep-rooted musical culture. Two actors from different backgrounds but having reached “the same point of putrefaction.”
In the play Hamlet pursues his solitude, isolated by the ghosts of the court of Elsinore; in that solitude Leo and Perla reflected their own solitude as marginalized artists in pursuit of something, whatever it might be.