Novecento ‘900

Alessandro Baricco, author of the book Novecento (’900), maintains that “you’re not really screwed as long as you have a good story and somebody to listen to it”.

Novecento is the story: a story of migration, a story of music as a common language, a story of hope and unknown horizons, the story of those who got on a ship to America and those who decided to get off their own life. It’s the story of one particular music that inside has all the music of the Earth.

Our Novecento, echoing the sweat and the hope from the old Titanic docks, will give substance to the past and present voices of those who cross seas and chase new horizons, and will do so through a collective story: the play will be performed in English with some parts in Italian, by professional actor Stefano Panzeri. This show will commemorate the story of the Virginian ocean liner, its passengers, and its extraordinary pianist.

The book Novecento, a classic in European literature, was published in English in 2010 by Oberon.

Stefano Panzeri was born in the summer of 1976 and since then he’s always been in love with how different humans are. Since he was a kid he used to spend his time imitating teachers, mates and relatives.

He fell in love with theatre and acting during his year as an exchange student in Seattle WA in 1993, thanks to Mr Ross, his host father and Spanish teacher; since then he’s never stopped ‘doing theatre’, as we say in Italy. He studied foreign languages (PhD in Spanish literature) and drama, and since 1998 he’s been working as a professional actor in theatre companies both in Italy and in Spain; he also set up an artistic ensemble with actors and playwriters from Spain and Portugal and they perform in multilanguage shows throughout Europe. In autumn 2016 he completed the highest level of Screen Acting course at the MET Film School in London, and he’s now starting to move his first steps in the film industry.

Last October Stefano performed “Oltremanica - Overseas” at The Crescent, a show about immigration organised in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Culture of Edinburgh.