He smiles when he admits that people recognize him on the street, after his participation in the successful fiction «Noi», where he played Cate’s nice boyfriend: «I’m glad», but he doesn’t change his mind. And when asked what he wants to be when he grows up, I don’t have time to think about it: «The theater director».
It may be that Leonardo Lidi, born in 1988, was born artistically in the theater. And he has never diverged much, not even when, between one show and another, he made cinema or television, albeit with good titles, you see a success like “The Incredible Story of the Isle of Roses”. Starting from his school days, which he attended at the Stabile in Turin, Lidi is a devotee of the stage with a predilection for the classics and an already highly rewarded career, with tributes ranging from Ubu 35 in 2016 to «Santa Estasi. Atridi: 8 family portraits “directed by Antonio Latella, to the victory of the call for directors under 30 of the Biennale College Teatro 2017 with the rewriting of” Ghosts “by Ibsen and the Critics Award of the Anct 2020 for the” Zoo of glass »by Williams and« The house of Bernarda Alba ». For the three-year period 2021-23, among other things, he was appointed associate artist of the TST, as well as deputy director of the School for actors directed by Valerio Binasco.
With the Stabile of Turin, Lidi also realizes the new staging, which will see the light, in national premiere, on May 3 at the Carignano: another classic, “Il Misantropo” by Molière, in a reading openly centered on the theme of love and interpreted by Christian La Rosa, Giuliana Vigogna, Orietta Notari, Francesca Mazza, Marta Malvestiti, Alfonso De Vreese, Riccardo Micheletti.
More a reading or a rereading? How much did you intervene on the text?
“I didn’t feel the urgency to change much, because the text speaks to us men of the twenty-first century as it spoke to Molière’s contemporaries in the seventeenth century. On one character I worked quite freely, namely Arsinoè, because I was very interested in deepening the theme of a mature woman who falls in love with a younger man. The setting and costumes, then, wink at the contemporary, according to the model of Molière, who proposed contemporary events to his audience ».
Why did you choose «The misanthrope»?
«I had no doubts about the author, not only because it is the four hundredth anniversary of his birth, but above all because measuring myself with his work is an idea that has attracted me for a long time. On the text, on the other hand, I almost changed my mind during the race because I had other Molierian titles in mind, especially “The imaginary patient”. It was the lockdown that gave me the idea. In that long period of collective confinement, a process we have been witnessing for years has become even more evident, a sort of habit of living “closed”, connected to the world by computers and cell phones, but physically detached from others and from real life. The can induce dangerous drifts such as the habit, for convenience or fear, of an increasingly virtual life ».
In short, like Alceste, we risk wanting to withdraw from the world. What can save us?
“The love. The same force that could save Alceste. Not for nothing, the author subtitles his text “l’Atrabilaire amoureux”, placing the accent precisely on the theme of love, even if, in this text, as in all the others, there is no lack of jabs against the vices of power and politics in a broad sense. I think that even in times of wars and pandemics – indeed, perhaps even more so – love must be put back at the center of an intellectual reflection, addressing it in a way that is anything but rhetorical, but as one of the greatest forces that move man and his life and can save him from self-destruction. Love, which is neither simple nor immune from human flaws, as Molière also explains, can also find its balance between egocentrisms and weaknesses, between desires for attention, masochisms, clashes and sweetness ».
She now lives in Turin. What do you do when not working?
“I have a very tight schedule, due to work. But, when I can, I go for a walk at the Valentino and I love to share some time with friends ».