Giuseppe Izzinosa

Playwright

By Fabrizio Catalfamo @newage1962

Giuseppe, first, thanks for accepting my invitation. Granted it would take many more pages to tell your life, I want to focus on your activities as playwright enthusiast.

Thank you for offering me this opportunity.

What is your artistic relationship with America?

Though I’m not quite familiar with it yet, I’m particularly interested in the American school going back to Lee Strasberg. I like the terse and detached American acting style and minimalist lines of Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino. However, I also enjoy the disillusionment and humane cynicism of the late Jerry Orbach. In the future, I’d like to direct Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Having worked as a salesman myself, that tragedy feels very close to me. It is the tragical, deep loneliness typical of traveling salespeople, who experience the paradox of meeting thousands of people and at the same time of always being alone. Miller focused quite sharply on this anomaly.

If you had to write a piece for Broadway, what would be its hypothetical title?

That would be “Inside me”. I’ve been cultivating this idea for quite some time now. It is the story of a person who receives a transplanted organ. This organ, however, preserves the memory of the person it was transplanted from. The story would oscillate between wry and dramatic situations. I’d like to use it to explore the inner world of people caught between body and soul.

In your biography, you refer among others, to some American authors from whom you draw inspiration. Can you name them?

I often took inspiration from American authors, starting with Tennessee Williams. When I was attending acting school, I studied many scenes from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I was also very much influenced by Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Arthur Miller. I’m also quite interested in Woody Allen and in his constant investigation of the human soul in such masterpieces as “Zelig”, “Play It

Again Sam” and “Whatever Works”, to name but a few. Woody Allen manages to turn everyday life into narration. He makes sense of people’s neuroses, confronts viewers with their contradictions by talking to them. He also turns viewers into the main characters of the story they are watching. In Allen’s movies, as well as in his books, I see the subtle Jewish irony that manages to make people reflect on anything, including such enormous tragedies as the Shoah.

I saw Pirandello perform in an Italian embassy in India. Why doesn’t Italian art become a common practice in all embassies around the world?

I think this is an indication of a major paradox. Italy is universally acknowledged to be the wealthiest country in the World based on cultural heritage. Politics, however, doesn’t take proper account of that. This is shown by the very fact that in 2018 Italy ranked third to last in Europe based on Government investments in cultural activities, with a paltry 0,6% of its GDP. One may, however, take comfort in the interesting work on arts education that is being carried out in primary schools. Interesting interactions also exist with drama workshops, but there is still a lot to be done. Paradoxically, art (and drama in particular) is not a primary concern at policy level. This probably also shows in the way resources are allocated to drama performance at Italian embassies worldwide.

We live in a particular period and therefore out of the norm. But what is the situation of the live show in times of “normality” in Italy?

Talking about pre-COVID times, a lot of activities were going on and playbills were rich in high-level titles. At the amateur level, there was a wealth of performances. These were offered by a broad range of theater companies and associations staging classical as well as unpublished texts. We have many theater schools. Quite a few of them belong to actors from prestigious academies, such as the Paolo Grassi Academy in Milan, the Academy of Teatro Stabile in Turin or the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome to name but a few. The “feeling for drama” is quite widespread. When I first meet with people, and we end up talking about drama, quite often over one in two of them attended or are attending some acting school.

You said: “As a younger man, I wanted to be an actor”. You attended the “Ernesto Cortese’s acting school” in Turin for two years in the Eighties, but you were forced to drop out for family reasons. Do you have any regrets about being forced to quit?

I have no regrets at all. This isn’t so much because I couldn’t do otherwise, but because my work gave me much satisfaction. If done properly, selling is quite rewarding. I learned and taught the trade, I coordinated sales networks and I wrote books on sales and selling. I also have no regrets because my return to drama came at the right time. Indeed, it came after a process of inner growth which developed along various paths.

These are now coming together into playwriting, acting and ultimately directing. Far from being over, this process is renewing itself and assuming new forms. Since I started studying stage direction, I set up a blog (www.teatro.to.it) where I gather my reflections based on the study of various texts, e.g. by Kate Mitchell, Stanislavsky, Grotowski, Eisenstein and, more generally, and of the History of Theater. Of course, had I pursued acting when I was a young man, I’d have developed greater skills and different experiences. These may have allowed me to set up an acting school of my own. In the not too distant future, however, I may even manage to achieve that dream, as well. Meanwhile, I’m attending acting and directing classes and stages in order to acquire the skills needed to offer audiences a serious and credible “product”.

You are very attached to your city, where you have always lived. If one day you decide to leave Turin, for which city in the world would you change it?

It would be a painful decision, indeed. If I did have to leave Turin, I’d choose Paris. Turin is also known as “the little Paris”. According to Hemingway, Paris is an important part of a man’s upbringing. So, I couldn’t live but in Paris. Somehow, it would feel like never leaving Turin.

You have just finished writing your second drama, which is called “Una volta ti vengo a trovare.” When and where will we be able to attend the performance?

If the Covid-19 scourge doesn’t get in the way, I’m planning to stage this drama in late November

/ early December 2021 at two theaters in Turin. A lot will also depend on the Covid control measures the authorities may adopt in the meantime. All in all, in order to be on stage one has better be alive and in good shape. Luckily, the crew is quite small. It consists of two actors (Angelo Cauda and Marco Mauro), one one actress (Marzia Trasanna) and one assistant director (Antonello Panero). We’ve known each other for a long time, and we’re all determined to stage this drama. If we can’t do it within the planned timeframe, we’ll stage it right afterwards.

Who were your reference actors?

First and foremost, Vittorio Gassman, agreat showman, a master actor and a man of boundless culture. Then, of equal importance, Arnoldo Foà, with his deep, grumpy humanity coupled to uncommon elegance and refinement. Then Giancarlo Giannini, with his wry and intense acting, and Toni Servillo, with his multi-facetted interpreting ability. Finally, Dario Fo and Franca Rame, whose irreverent texts and performances left a major and unforgettable mark on Italian theater and beyond. Among foreign actors, I take inspiration from Gerard Depardieu, Jean Gabin and Daniel Auteuil. Among American actors, I’m particularly fond of Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Walter Matthau and Henry Fonda.

“I’m Italian” magazine, is aimed particularly to the Italians in the world. Many of them are second or third generation and many have never seen Italy. How could you describe it through your eyes?

Italy is a surprising country, rich in sometimes blatant contrasts. It is endowed with a huge, invaluable cultural heritage and a knack for bright imagination. At the same time, it is hindered and slowed down by a suffocating bureaucracy. Italians are rich in outbursts of generosity, but they have a short memory and are inclined to seeking easy solutions to complex issues. As Primo Levi once said, Italians are a people of skeptics. Italy needs visiting and roaming all over to appreciate how many differences exist in such a small place. Italy has a long history of small, divided and conflicting potentates, quite often serving the interests of foreign powers. It developed very different cultures, practices and customs. Rather than a single culture, therefore, Italy is a colorful set of cultures and peoples which only recently found some kind of unity, and an unfinished one at that. Foreigners have a hard time discovering all of these different cultures. The possibility to get in touch with five or six of them in just a few hundred miles is peculiar to Italy. In my view this is indeed a unique heritage well worth exploring.

By I’M Italian Team

He recognised the similarity of the Bolgherian climate to that of Bordeaux and the potential for the region to create long-lived, exceptional Cabernet Sauvignon. With this in mind he directed his efforts to making a success of this celebrated grape in Bolgheri, starting by planting clones of Cabernet Sauvignon taken from Chateau Lafite in the 1950s.

Making wine from Cabernet Sauvignon was a controversial decision in Tuscany where the tradition has always been to produce quality wines from indigenous varieties, most particularly Sangiovese. The local market, accustomed to lighter, local wines, weren’t very welcoming of the first vintages of Sassicaia. As a result, recognition for the estate was only achieved in the mid 1970’s when the vines and wines had time to mature.

There are two significant turning points in the development of the reputation of Sassicaia. Firstly, Sassicaia emerged victorious in 1978 in a Decanter blind tasting against 33 other Bordeaux blends from around the world. Secondly,in the 1990’s when it was awarded its own DOC status; Bolgheri Sassicaia DOC; a phenomenal achievement for a wine once classified as a basic IGT.

Today, the entrepreneurial spirit and innovation of the Marchese is celebrated and Sassicaia has reached the lofty heights of the world’s most iconic wines.

In the 1920s the Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta dreamt of creating a ‘thoroughbred’ wine and for him, as for all the aristocracy of the time, the ideal was Bordeaux. This is how he described it in a letter to the esteemed wine critic, Luigi Veronelli dated 11 June 1974:

“…the origins of my experiment date back to the years between 1921 and 1925 when, as a student in Pisa and often a guest of the Salviati Dukes in Migliarino, I drank a wine produced from one of their vineyards…which had the same unmistakable “bouquet” as an aged Bordeaux….”

In the 1940s, having settled with his wife Clarice on the Tenuta San Guido on the Tyrrhenian coast, he experimented with several French grape varieties (whose cuttings he had recovered from the estate of the Dukes Salviati in Migliarino) and concluded that the Cabernet had “the bouquet I was looking for.”

A wine made mainly from Cabernet Sauvignon was a fundamental change to the Tuscan and Piedmont tradition of Sangiovese and Nebbiolo, respectively. The innovative decision to plant this variety at Tenuta San Guido was partly due to the similarity Mario Incisa had noted between Tuscan terrain and that of Graves in Bordeaux.

Rocks excavated from the “Palmetta” vineyard before replanting it in 1999 ‘Graves’, or ‘gravel’ in French refers to the rocky terrain which distinguishes the Bordeaux area; similarly, the gravely vineyard sites in Tuscany impart the same characteristics on Sassicaia, “stony ground”, as its cherished French brother.

The Marchese’s first vintages were not warmly received. Critics accustomed to light, local wines were not encouraging; it was not taken into consideration that wines made from the more complex Cabernet Sauvignon grape would need more time to mature and develop.

And thus from 1948 to 1967, Sassicaia remained a strictly private affair, only to be consumed at Tenuta San Guido.

Each year, a few cases were stored to age in the Castiglioncello di Bolgheri cellar. The Marchese soon realized that by ageing the wine it improved considerably. Friends and relatives now urged Mario Incisa to experiment further with his project and perfect his revolutionary winemaking style. It was not until 1968 that Sassicaia was first commercially released – the welcome was worthy of a Bordeaux Premier Cru.

Over the next few years, the cellar was moved to a temperature controlled location, steel fermentation vats replaced wooden vats, and French barriques were introduced to the aging process.