Andrée Ruth Shammah and the 50 years of the Franco Parenti Theatre

TOndrée Ruth Shammah had as teachers Eduardo De Filippo, Giorgio Strehler, Franco Parenti. He has directed more than 150 films. And he also transformed an abandoned cinema in Milan into a beautiful and multifunctional theater space with an adjoining swimming pool, renovated by architect Michele De Lucchi.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Franco Parenti Theatre this year she gave herself: the docufilm Carriage drivers and goblins (on the history of the Franco Parenti Theater and its 50 years of management), the direction of The misanthropeor by Molière with the actor and baritone Luca Micheletti and a new theater hall called Lei, which will be inaugurated next March with Who like me by Roy Chen, his latest directorial. And he says: “The time has come to pass the baton to young people.”

Mrs. Shammah, should we believe you?
The fact that I won’t direct doesn’t mean I’m retiring. I will take care of the theater, I want to focus on the future. The next three years is entirely dedicated to young directors. I will help them and take care of giving them economic sustainability. Kids must fall in love with the idea of ​​bringing a text to life on stage. I’ll keep my ears open to hear what happens.

Andrée Ruth Shammah, a woman at the helm

She has been at the helm, as a woman, of a prestigious theater for half a century. The only case in Italy. It has been difficult?
Theater was my life. At the beginning it was easier because you are a young, pretty girl, very direct and spontaneous, maybe even nice. The real problem was going further, but I have a good character. I never take it too hard. I have only now, at 75, come to have recognized my artistic side. The critics have either ignored me or massacred me. I lived among prejudices: because I am a woman, I had an affair with my first actor (Franco Parenti, ed), because I was a Craxian socialist, because I am a pro-Israel Jew.

Because she’s not poor…
Yes, this too. But if you own houses in the mountains and by the sea and, instead of going on holiday, you spend the summers in Milan working, it will be for something you are passionate about, right? I have always fought to find money for the theatre, I also used my creativity to seek private funding to renovate it, then to fix up the swimming pool next door (the former Caimi which remained disused for decades and was reborn as Bagni Misteriosi, ed). I approach what remains of the great Milanese bourgeoisie, trying to get it into their heads that they must help culture. The rich have always been patrons, a concept that is somewhat out of fashion today. My advantage, my true privilege, is to do the things I believe in. I was a free woman. Freedom means not depending on others.

What is the price of freedom?
I will say something banal: loneliness. And now there is also the loneliness of when you return home, my son’s father has been dead for ten years now.

But her home is the theatre, she is never alone on stage and in the hall!
Yes, it’s true, there are many children there, family, a big family.

His first free choice was to found the theater in via Pier Lombardo in Milan in 1973, in a run-down cinema, with the communist Franco Parenti and the inconvenient Catholic Giovanni Testori. Was she the glue between different ideas, souls and cultures?
Of course, absolutely. Also because Testori and Franco had historic arguments.

Is there room today for dialogue between differences of thought?
No. This is the worst time. During the demonstration in Rome on November 25th against violence against women, Israelis were forbidden to talk about what happened on October 7th. Silence on the mass femicide carried out by Hamas militiamen against Israeli women raped, kidnapped, tortured and killed at rave parties or on kibbutzim. This shows what the climate is like.

How do you experience the war between Israel and the Gaza Strip?
Israel cannot help but strike at Hamas, which aims to destroy Israel. Palestinians are hostages of Hamas. Do people want to open their eyes or not?

Let’s go back to the theater. How do you stay in balance between past and present, looking to the future?
Theater accustoms you to being in the present, in the “here and now”. Everything passes, everything turns to ash. You construct a show with difficulty, first choose the text, choose the actors, rehearse, finally go on stage. And after the last reply there is nothing left. The scene is dismantled, the actors who have been together for so long, accomplices, leave. The director is like a monk who has made a mandala and then erases everything with his hand. At the moment you’re sorry, that’s why I build walls, theatrical spaces that encourage people to put on shows. The happiness you feel when you work on the stage tables is great. I had wonderful encounters at the theater.

Tell us about Eduardo De Filippo.
Eduardo is the theater. I had the opportunity to have a wonderful relationship with him, to have lunch at his house and chat about everything. I acted as his assistant. I was passionate about being close to him, I liked his gaze on the world. I have always been fascinated by intelligence. Then, many years later, you think back and are amazed: “But how? When I was a guest at his house, Eduardo brought me coffee in bed with a rose? I still don’t believe it. I remember myself as a devoted student who hung on the lips of others to learn.

Another of his teachers, Giorgio Strehler.
I had very long, eternal, phone calls with him. Recently I went to visit him in via Medici, in the same house where we were invited to talk as kids, he always listened to us. House with white carpet, he arrived in a white bathrobe, barefoot. He needed this cleaning around him. We didn’t leave Piccolo, they kicked us out. But Strehler and Franco loved each other very much. When Parenti fell during a rehearsal and nearly died, Strehler went to visit him in hospital and promised to help him: in fact he acted in his place at the Pier Lombardo and I, on that occasion, directed Strehler! The room in via Rovello had been promised to us, after the new headquarters of the Piccolo had been completed. At the time it was raining inside Pier Lombardo, Emilio Tadini had placed funnels, the rain falling into the buckets produced a sort of symphony. I remember the day Strehler called me and said: «But would you be happy if your theater, the theater you built, was occupied by another? When I am no longer here, Via Rovello will be yours, you and your theater will be the true legacy of the Piccolo Teatro”. But instead of waiting I rolled up my sleeves and set off down another path. Our theater belongs to the municipality. I brought 20 million euros of investments for the renovation of the rooms, I have never used this money for my shows. The Secret Garden, next to the “Lei” room, will be another gift to the city. When I am no longer here I will leave a wonderful complex in Milan.

The four rooms of the Franco Parenti Theater are always full of young people.
We have a transversal audience, since the first show: January 16, 1973 for the premiere of The Ambleto From Testori there was the industrialist Pirelli and the kids from the neighborhood. We were also alternatives to the left. We are an open theater of debate. The difficulty is keeping a common thread. My parameters are humanity, absolute non-intellectuality. If the viewer doesn’t understand, it’s the show’s fault. The misanthrope by Molière is not an easy text, but there was no one in the room who didn’t understand.

Every director has a favorite show on his CV. What is his? What does he remember with most pleasure?
The Forest at night (1982) by Gaetano Sansone. I also loved it a lot Ondine by Jean Giraudoux for the gardens of Villa Reale, with Philippe Daverio on a white horse welcoming the public. AND The double inconstancya by Pierre de Marivaux, in a touring version in the summer of 1979 at the Chiostri dell’Umanitaria.

Why did you call the new room Lei, for women?
It is a space capable of having many aspects, like a woman. The last piece of this theater citadel. Franco Parenti is not a location, but a place. When I sit in the room I understand that this is the place where I wanted to be. Theater is a fiction that is truer than the truth. Through fiction you can get inside feelings and relationships. When you choose to stage a text you are at the service of that text. And the public.

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