Remembrance Day, at the Piccinni Theater the project “Tanto worth having fun” and the special edition of La Palestra.

As part of the theater season of the Municipality of Bari - Department of Culture in collaboration with the Teatro Pubblico Pugliese, there are two events scheduled at the Piccinni Municipal Theater in view of Remembrance Day: tomorrow, Thursday 18 January, "It's worth having fun" , the matinee and evening project, without subscription, by Antonella Carone, Tony Marzolla, Loris Leoci with the dramaturgy of Damiano Nirchio; on January 27, Remembrance Day, in matinee, a special edition of La Palestra, curated by Francesco Asselta.

Starting point and source of inspiration for “It's worth having fun” was the Westerbork transit camp in Holland, where between 1942 and 1943 many leading names on the European cultural scene gathered: Camilla Spira, Max Ehrlich, Kurt Gerron (returning from the great success of “The Blue Angel ”), but also the pianist Willy Rosen or the swing duo “Jonny and Jones”, to name a few.

A Westerbork, an intermediate stage towards extermination, there was also a theater where these artists continued to perform to cheer not only the audience of internees, but above all their jailers and tormentors seated in the front rows. These artists were expected to make people laugh, to show off their entire best repertoire: it served the hierarchs who enjoyed performances with the best that the theater scene had known until then; it served the artists themselves, who could thus aspire to a special and temporary immunity. In the midst of the horrors of death and human barbarism, Art was therefore able to make space for itself to help us survive, "to connect the time of the dead with that of those who will come" or, simply, to have one more chance. One last thing.

For the new appointment of The Palestra, the Piccinni Theater will open up to collective training to keep the historical memory of the Shoah alive. The intervention of artists, journalists and intellectuals will be an opportunity to remember an important page in world history, which does not only concern the Jewish people, but all of humanity.

"Memory not only concerns the past but, to put it in Calvino's words, “contains it like the lines of a hand", written in the edges of the story whose segments are made of scratches, serrations, notches, commas - comments Ines Pierucci -.

"Today it is even more necessary to remember the Shoah and valorise Memory as an act of peace to underline how violence has always been and will remain weak. Peace, however, is radical, much more strength is needed to peacefully resolve issues that still today put the right to life of millions of people at risk".

"Partly in jest, partly so as not to die!” said Ettore Petrolini quoting Madama Butterfly. And isn't it precisely to exorcise death that man, or someone higher up, invented laughter? And what could be better, then, than changing a bad tragedy, Shakespeare's famous Hamlet, into a farce that can make you die... laughing? Three wacky comic actors will try desperately in a mysterious race against time: vaudeville, futurist comic theater, kabarett, vaudeville, revue, Yiddish humor are mixed in a large pot with the words of the English bard. A surreal homage to 900th century comedy and to its History: an incessant joyous ride between quips, flashes and jokes while fleeing from a tragedy that meanwhile chases, gets closer, does not give up and above all does not resign itself to defeat. He wants to take back what is his. The doubt arises that there is little to laugh about now. Nevertheless… "We don't have much to lose anymore, it seems to me. Might as well… Have fun. No?".