Paolo Tibaldi is a young actor from Alba in love with theater, an activity that he considers a form of life, a journey between present and future, a formative spaceship that crosses the literary space. I meet him during a break during rehearsals at the «Sociale» in Alba.
“My first theatrical experience – he says – dates back to when I was 5 years old, a play in kindergarten”. During elementary school he began to recite at the oratory: «as a hobby, I enjoyed myself with my classmates with small scripts that we put on stage. In high school I chose an address where I was sure there would be an acting course. When I finished my studies I was employed in a Cantina, but the desire to do theater was so strong that I left and enrolled at the Teatro delle ten in Turin, I continued to specialize at the Paolo Grassi in Milan, later I did Masters in Rome and Udine. In 2008 I joined the Oscar Barile theater in Sinio, with which I have been collaborating for thirteen years, it has been my gym and still is, a fundamental experience, it created the foundations of what came after; that experience gave me the flavor of theater as a vehicle of a message, and not an end in itself ».
The big opportunity arrives: «with the participation in some films and television dramas, among the many works the film by the Taviani brothers“ Una materia privata ”. It was a secondary but important role. Later I worked with Ricky Tognazzi in the film “My mother” then “In the legend of the bandit and the champion” with Beppe Fiorello and again “Mata Hari” by Rosanna Siclari and so on. In the theater I worked in the direction of the “Bottega dell’orefice” directed and written by me. Recently, with the support of Massimo Dapporto, I staged one of my latest works at the Sociale di Alba, the capital of business culture for Alba: I tell the origins of Alba’s redemption, of its human and economic development ».
Tibaldi is also known for his great love for Fenoglian literature, for that land of the upper Langhe that he feels is his.
«The pages of Fenoglio are still alive – he says -, they speak and sing as in a Langhe Divine Comedy where hell is the evil and heaven is the well-being that has resulted from it. My love for Fenoglio is not born only for belonging to the territory, he is a universal writer, he is among those I absolutely prefer for the themes he deals with, not only for the environment he runs through, he is a living author, he deals with current topics , resistance sees it as endurance in an idea of salvation, the figure of the woman and the child as decisive figures. The places where Fenoglio sets his works are essential to the works themselves, such pages could not exist if they were not told in that environment.
I ask Paolo for his definition of theater: «Wherever a society exists, the need to tell life always manifests itself, in a courtyard, under a tree, in a corridor or around the kitchen table, this is theater. It is the path of our life, its history, for better or for worse ».