The Adventures of Pinocchio is not only a children’s fairy tale but also a coming-of-age novel that has become a timeless classic. Known to all as a brat who tells lies and grows a nose, Pinocchio is a naive and gullible but good-hearted puppet who, after getting into a thousand troubles, understands the importance of telling the truth.
Thanks to the Rebelòt Theater, founded in Los Angeles by Italian actress Silvia Bottini, the character of Pinocchio returns to the stage and becomes the protagonist of the show Pinocchio, the Wooden Boy. After debuting last April at the IAMLA Museum in Los Angeles, Pinocchio, the Wooden Boy has become a traveling show.
How did Rebelòt Theater come about?
It all started in 2018 when Fondazione Italia offered me to create a cycle of performances in Italian for the language program at the Benjamin Franklin Elementary and CHAMPS High School. The project, supported by the Italian Consulate and the Italian Cultural Institute, went very well. Five years and a pandemic later, the Italian American Museum of LA asked me to prepare a show to complete the temporary exhibit on Pinocchio, this time in English. As I was making masks and sewing costumes, I realized that so much work and dedication would only live on in front of an audience twice, for replicas at the museum. So I decided to start my own theater company, choosing to offer customized, site-specific performances for private events, where the offerings range from the actual show to a murder mystery dinner written especially for the participants.
How did the choice of its name come about?
Rebelòt is a word from the Milanese dialect that means mess. It is what my father used to say to me when I was playing, “Varda chï che rebelòt!” For me, it was a compliment and a source of pride that my imagination and joy had created a rebelòt. Only as an adult did I discover that rebelòt means confusion, disorder. Again as an adult, I learned that, as Nietzsche also argued, it is precisely from chaos that art is born. We can say that my vocation and this young theater company were both born from my passion for rebelòt.
In writing the play, were you more inspired by the classic Disney film or Collodi’s book?
Disney created a beautiful reinterpretation of the text. Very different from Collodi’s book which, although it has fantastic elements and can be considered a coming-of-age novel, is certainly not a children’s book, at least for our times. My play had budget and fruition requirements, which led me to focus mainly on language but I tried to keep the teachings and the most important events of the original intact.
Can you give us some details about the play?
The play lasts 45′, is for children of all ages, and keeps parts of the original text intact. I have added the character of the Storyteller, who has the didactic function of explaining to children how to follow the play, but also a playful function, that is, to engage the audience actively in listening. I have included stop-motion animations that I made myself, to introduce different ways of communication and to show scenes difficult to transpose, such as the one in which Pinocchio and Geppetto are swallowed by the whale.
With me on stage, there is also an American actor, Mitchell Lam Hau.
Pinocchio, the Wooden Boy was created in collaboration with IAMLA, but is the goal to transform it into an itinerant show?
Yes, we brought it, to begin with, to a very special location, the Reptacular Ranch in Sylmar. This demonstrates how we can adapt a show to the location (site-specific), enhancing both. In fact, we go from a classical theater with a technical facility, to an open space under millions of stars in the heart of the Los Angeles National Forest.
Did this show differ from the other?
Since the ranch is run by two veterinary biologists who offer guided tours, I thought of creating, for the young audience, a special experience. Before the show, children met many of the animals featured in Collodi’s book. I prepared an interactive tour in which each animal conveyed the advice that was also given to Pinocchio. At the end of the show, they had the chance to be immortalized with Lupita, the little donkey from Toyland in the Playland Photo Booth.
Why are you so passionate about theater?
I acted for 15 years in Italy, I won a scholarship and two national awards, but my dream has always been to do cinema. My parents didn’t have time to take me to the theater and I grew up watching movies. However, now that I’ve been studying and working in the Mecca of Cinema for about eight years, I feel a physical longing for those dusty stages, for the silence that follows the who’s who of the stage, for the little artistic licenses one takes when the director is not in the room, for the dressing room rituals, for the reassuring constant repetition of the script, even offstage, when suddenly memory connects life with fiction.
The theatrical reality in Los Angeles is certainly not thriving. There are many reasons for this. Certainly, at the time of production, one must take into account the needs of the audience, and the Los Angeles spectator is more accustomed to entertainment than culture or introspection, the real kind, not the rehabilitative kind of the new radical chic gurus. Los Angeles is a beautiful hotel where experiences depend on the reason behind the trip. Few are those who stay, who build. The social fabric is complex. I think that beyond understanding what can be built in the future, the Italian community should have a theater to represent it in Los Angeles, today. Not only to keep our cultural identity alive but to nurture our natural inclination for social sharing and analysis. Because we Italians are definitely much more than pizza, mafia, and mandolin.
Yes. I won a call for proposals issued by the Italian Cultural Institute with an idea to do a show to celebrate the centenary of Italo Calvino’s birth. It will be called Buon Compleanno Italo! and it will be in Italian.
A dream of yours?
Making a show about Eleonora Duse!
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