[THE INITIATIVES]

Reading for Sant’Anna

Written and directed by Luca ZINGARETTI

Saturday, September 17th 2005 - hour 21:00 - Church’s square, Sant’Anna di Stazzema

With:
Luca ZINGARETTI
Maria Cristina fIORETTI
Biancamaria LELLI
Gianluigi FOGACCI

Music by:
Rosario GENOVESE first violin
Elena CENTURIONE second violin
Paola EMANUELE viola
Giuseppe MULE’ cello

Collaboration and text’s research by Nuccio SIANO
Collaboration at the dramaturgy
and help at the direction by Manuela RISPOLI
Technical direction by Giuseppe SABATINO
Technical services TECNOSERVICE
Staff video VIDEOPLAY
Press Office MORGANA
Executive production
Franco CORTESE

The show
A soloist voice, three actors speaking, four instruments playing . A "script" made of historical documents, testimonies, trials’ reports anad newspapers’ articles, to permit to the history to tell directly and to remember, without rhetoric, what happened up there, in the church’ s little square of Sant’Anna di Stazzema, the day 12th of August of 1944. In this way Luca Zingaretti, the "Reading for Sant’Anna di Stazzema"’s author and director besides actor, chose to perform the drama which was executed, for the first time, on September 17th in Sant’Anna di Stazzema. The nazi-fascist slaughter of Sant’Anna is one of the most dramatic which Italy could have known: 560 victims, almost all women, children, old people. The whole village was destroyed. Difficult, almost impossible, to tell the horror of that day. Zingaretti chose to tell it through fragments, recovering testimonies and documents and building a dramatic reading.
The event was introduced to the press in the center of the Tuscan regional Board in Florence. Alessandro Starnini, vice-president of the Tuscan Board, on this occasion said: "First of all, a strong and convinced thanks to Luca Zingaretti and his collaborators which, I care to say it, haven’t taken any cent for their work, which is even more important because It’s expressly created for Sant’Anna di Stazzema; moreover it’s born in a symbolic year, because few months ago the Military Court of La Spezia sentenced to the life imprisonment ten ex SS guilty for the slaughter of Sant’Anna; it was a sentence of justice, not of revenge. However, we have still to do a lot more; above all, we have an essential mission, and to do it Luca becomes a precious help: we have to gather up the memory to hand it to the young people, so that they could use it without rhetoric but with real passion."
Zingaretti said: "In these years made of rapid and tragic changes, in my opinion, it’s fundamental to research about the memory: this kind of work allow to find our roots, to understand from where we are come and so, also to build our own identity which could be open toward the others. This is the meaning underlying our initiative. It isn’t a show - he said - it’s a reading made of documents, direct testimonies and meditations. A way to meditate all together and, also, to give back something to the survivors which, not only suffered that events but, during the following years, until the trial’s beginning, have had also to suffer the silence and the lack of will to research the offenders."
Today Sant’Anna is also National Park of Peace, a sacred place as Assisi or Jerusalem, which had to know the horror to become sacred. Sant’Anna is the Regional Center of the Resistance, there’s the Historical Museum and the headstone engraved by the ode which was written by Calamandrei against Kesserling: "You will have it, comrade Kesserling, the monument which you claim to us Italian… ", Sant’Anna is a place to stop for a long time, to listen, to grow.
We will reach our aim, if our show will follow this way, if we will can make to hear the voices since that time and if we will succeed to honor a peace which is being too often insulted.

The "Reading for Sant’Anna" had the support, besides of the Tuscan regional Board, also of the Lucca’s Province and the Stazzema’s Municipality; moreover, the Association Martyrs of Sant’Anna, the National Park of Peace, the Historical Museum of the Resistance and the Committee for the honors to the Martyrs of Sant’Anna was giving their collaboration.