Paola and I have been married since June 18, 1989, and since then we have lived in the countryside, at Le Ariette, a small farm in the hills southwest of Bologna, in Valsamoggia. We are actors and farmers. We cultivate the land, grow wheat, and turn it into bread. Not to sell it, but to eat it every day and share it with the audiences we meet during our performances.
Perhaps that’s why we were invited to create a new performance for Matera 2019, inspired by the breads of the Mediterranean.
And so we decided to write a diary of everyday life during the summer of 2019 (from June 18 to September 21), the thirtieth summer we have spent at Le Ariette, to tell the story of our present through wheat. To speak about the present, with all its contradictions, its intolerances—not only food-related—our relationship with the earth, with animals, with plants, with other people, and with the society we all live in. That’s how THIRTY YEARS OF WHEAT – Autobiography of a Field was born.
Forty spectators sit around a large, low U-shaped table. We are in the center, sitting on the floor, which is covered in wheat grains. We prepare and bake tigelle (a small, traditional bread from our region) and read excerpts from the diary. In the distance, a faint echo of an orchestra playing Summertime. Three months of diary, thirty years of life. Perhaps a performance. Perhaps a vigil, like those summer nights under the stars, when we feel small—very small—like specks of dust among the fields