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Nino Pozzo and his
secret
There are many ways to tell the
story of a person.
But a story, writes Buber, a Jewish philosopher, should only be told if it
is of some use to someone.
So what is the use of telling the story of Nino Pozzo?
Perhaps it helps to recover a part of our history, both the personal and
the collective history of the city. A "submerged" history which
can be reconstructed through a mosaic of gazes.
Through the eyes of many of the men and woman who saw and listened to his
theatre we can recover a collective image which is perhaps an unconscious
archetype of our imagination.
Nino Pozzo was born in Verona, in Piazza Cittadella, on 7 February 1901.
His theatre did not wait for the public inside the semi-darkness of a
hall.
It was the theatre which went to the public.
He arrived suddenly and disappeared equally suddenly. A little like the
circus in the image of Fellini as a child, who in the evening watched the
magical tent from his window while the morning after, as if by some
conjuring trick, it was no longer there.
In this "pitching of the puppet theatre" an arcane rite was
hidden.
It was the humble "conquest" of a territory, which played on the
fascination of the "secret".
The "mysterious thing" which was gradually constructed under the
eyes of the people was a newly created world.
A micro-universe with its own earth and sky.
A miniature world.
Pozzo called it the Teatro Mondo Piccino when he created it in 1923.
In this miniature world things could happen which it was difficult to see
in the "big" world. And yet one could say that this "travelling"
world was on a more human scale.
The First World War had just ended, leaving a sense of emptiness and
bewilderment.
People needed to "dream", to laugh and perhaps also to cry.
To give a name to their desires and their fears.
The puppet theatre presented all this with living metaphors.
The epic duel between good and evil, fleeing from the dominion of
metaphysics, took on the face of heroes "within the reach of
man".
The old fascination of the commedia dell’arte took life in the puppet
theatre.
The theatre was sort of popular rite. A form of collective exorcism.
The devils who from time to time played the role of different masters were
hurled into the abyss and good triumphed once again.
But the hero was neither Ulysses, nor Aeneas nor Achilles.
But rather a character called Fagiolino, who the common man could identify
with. He was fundamentally the hero of civil conscience, of freedom
attained and day-to-day justice. In this hero it was possible to find a
glimmer of light in the lethargy of many "cowardly" souls.
Alongside him there was Sandrone, a descendent of the ignorant and
perpetually hungry buffoon. People also found a part of themselves in him
and they learnt to laugh at their own limitations, practising the exorcism
of that delusion of omnipotence which had already rooted itself in the
heart of Europe and which was shortly to explode like the abscess of some
mortal illness.
Pozzo travelled backwards and forwards across the city.
Up to the 1940s he had several assistants, even as many as nine people,
and the repertoire went as far as to include operettas accompanied by a
small orchestra and masterpieces of literature such as the "Promessi
sposi".
However the strong point remained the repertoire of the old puppet masters
who had handed down scenarios of "certain success". Pozzo had
learnt these secrets from his maestro, Francesco Campogalliani. This
famous poet-puppet master, who Cesare Zavattini has described as a "great,
immense, fabulous and unique artist" directed his pupil towards a
successful combination of traditions.
Indeed Pozzo did not continue the Veneto tradition which sees Harlequin as
the protagonist, but preferred to use the comic couple of Fagiolino and
Sandrone from the Emilia area as his protagonists. The Veneto dialect was
guaranteed by the inevitable presence of Brighella, always busy with his
dishes and his tricks and by an infantile and ingenuous character called
Facanapa, originating from Verona.
According to tradition Pantalone and the Doctor alternated in the role of
the authoritarian father figure which was never lacking in the play.
This healthy combination of influences unconsciously demolished the
barriers of narrow and short-sighted regionalism, moving towards the
common hero hidden in the heart of man, the eternal traveller.
In the 1930s and 1940s, probably as a reaction to the increasingly
widespread presence of cinema, Pozzo’s theatre invented the use "mechanical
tricks" which were a genuine attraction for the public. With the use
of gunpowder and a short circuit it was possible to fire a cannon on stage
which could knock down the wings and scenery, specially designed for the
occasion. However the impact was impressive.
Likewise the presentation of a zoo made up of animals set in motion by
various devices and which were involved in spectacular struggles.
Pozzo had his puppets constructed and the backdrops painted.
Umberto Pighi, Antonio Avanzi and Umberto Brunelli were sculptors who
followed one another over time.
Among the painters of the backdrops, we should mention an artist from our
city, Mario Flangini.
Mario Flangini, a many-sided artist, encouraged his friend Pozzo, giving
him a puppet theatre and puppets at the beginning of his artistic career.
The puppet theatre, whether it uses marionettes, puppets or dolls, has an
unusual destiny.
In the world of theatre with human actors, when the actor dies his theatre
dies with him.
In the puppet theatre the actors remain.
They emanate a "mana", that almost magical power which they have
experienced during the life of the puppet master. Today we can animate the
puppets which have been handed down to us by Pozzo, who in his turn
received them from Campogalliani, and according to Garcia Lorca they are
again possessed by the "duende", namely by the ancestral force
which triggers off the force of a god or a demon inside of things.
However Pozzo, like the great puppet master Obraztsov, came from the world
of acting.
He was a protagonist in amateur theatricals in the city in the 1920s,
continuing to "tread the boards" up to 1948, when he inaugurated
the first theatrical season at the Teatro Romano in Verona, interpreting
Christ in the Passion.
Pozzo was invited to leave Verona and move to Rome to continue working as
an actor, but he did not accept and remained in his city, choosing to work
definitively behind the scenes.
We do not know why Pozzo refused the invitation, but certainly his
decision to stay in city, accepting a modest and sometimes difficult life,
made him a poet of our times, who put reasons of the heart before
financial motives.
Pozzo slimmed down the company. He worked with the man who was to be his
inseparable co-protagonist from 1955 until the day of his death: Tony
Bogoni.
Bogoni was in truth a great "organiser" of proverbial pedantry
who tried to modernise the Teatro Mondo Piccino in terms of technical
equipment and image.
Thus Pozzo and Bogoni visited schools, children’s playgrounds and
squares in every corner of the city and the province of Verona.
They were very precise in their work and carried out every action
according to a long-established ritual.
They dismounted the puppet theatre, rolled up and tied the backdrop and
dismantled the electrical system. Finally Pozzo returned the puppets to a
trunk or suitcase, never failing caress his characters before putting them
away.
The show was made up of many secrets: from the pipe ready to erupt in
flames, to the silvery rain, to the noises produced using different
devices.
But the true spectacle was the wonder to be seen in the eyes of the
public, the laughs and the silence, the fear and the joy which moved the
spectators.
To live, the theatre needs a public to live for.
This complicity lasted sixty years and became the secret of Nino Pozzo’s
theatre.
Our puppet master died on 11 January 1983.
He was over eighty years old.
He worked in his puppet theatre until the very end.
Maybe it was precisely there that he felt death breathing down his neck.
And like his heroes he did not flee from the ultimate challenge.
He rolled up the backdrop, turned off the lights, put the puppets to sleep
in the trunk and dismounted the puppet theatre.
Then he looked back.
His arcane secrets remain for his disciples.
But all the others?
The thousands of faces, their eyes lit up over so many years ?
All those who daydreamed and believed in the living metaphors, where were
they to go?
What would their eyes continue to see?
The puppet master left with this question and made his way towards death.
But he would return each night to awaken the poet that there is in each of
us.
Marco Campedelli
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