Moby Dick. 1971

Moby Dick (1971)

directed by Mario Ricci
from Hermann Melville
scenes by Claudio Previtera, Mario Romano, Carlo Montesi
with Claudio Previtera, Angela Diana, Lillo Monachesi, Carlo Montesi, Deborah Hayes
music by Modern Jazz Quartet, Richard Strauss
film by Guido Cusolich
First performance Palermo, III Review of the Teatro Nuovo (New Theater and Cabaret Theater), November 1971
Replica
Rome, L’Abaco Theater, January 1972
Florence, Rondò di Bacco, Italian first global information about the research theater (Research 1), 19-20 April 1972
Rome, Festival of Unity, 29 September 1972
Edinburgh International Festival, [August / September] 1972
Belgrade, BITEF, September / October 1972
Rome, L’Abaco Theater, March 1973

Notes on Mario Ricci’s Moby Dick: figures of actors and cinema in four dimensions

by Cristina Grazioli
The theatrical vocation of one of the ‘founding fathers’ of New Italian Theatre takes shape in the area of a visual practice
riddled with the presence of the ‘artificial’. Educated in the visual arts, since the beginnings of his creative practice Mario
Ricci invited a number of collaborators, amongst whom Pasquale Santoro, Nato Frascà, Achille Perilli, Gastone Novelli,
Claudio Previtera, Franco Libertucci, Umberto Bignardi. After a stint in Paris in 1959, he consolidated his practice working at
Michael Meschke’s Marionettentheater in Stockholm between 1960 and 1962. Here he also got to know Harry Kramer’s
mechanical theatre.
Two fundamental coordinates guide our reading of Moby Dick: the visual arts and the marionette theatre as every
avantgarde has confronted it, that is as the terrain where the human encounters mechanical and artificial presences. The
circumstances of Moby Dick allow for an analysis guided by the piece’s reception and its resonance. Firstly, because Ricci
himself made available a number of materials that describe both how the piece was made and how its poetic apparatus
functioned. Secondly, because this 1971 work opens up to a spectatorial panorama which since its inception was international
in scope: before unveiling the performance in Italy, Ricci published his description of Moby Dick in a special issue of The
Drama Review dedicated to puppets and marionettes. The piece was also presented at the Edinburgh Festival, at the Bitef in
Belgrade, and in Munich. Keep read…

Mario Ricci. Moby Dick (1971). Description-synopsis

by Cristina Grazioli
We offer a brief synopsis of the show, highlighting some of the processes used and referring the reader to the director’s own accurate description (published in “The Drama Review” and then in the book edited by Quadri) for more detail.
The scene opens in the dark. At the centre, from upstage, Ahab appears (Claudio Previtera). He stands still in the dark silence for a minute, then slowly advances towards the proscenium dragging his wooden leg (the leg of the actor, stuck in a barrel), where a light has come on. He is followed by the first of the fish-actors (Carlo Montesi).
The other figures enter (some from the back of the stage, some from the side): they wear simple tunics and black tights, they have silvery fish heads and watery movements; they place their animal body parts in the spotlights that are scattered across the stage and hold up props (a harpoon, for example) that produce sounds as they are beaten and struck. From the start, the viewer’s attention is thus lead towards images that are revealed through lights and sound.