Widely considered amongst the most innovative figures in Italian contemporary art, Antonio Rezza (1965) and Flavia Mastrella (1960) (also known as “RezzaMastrella”) are two artists based in the province of Rome. Their creations span across different media, including theatre, literature, photography, and cinema. In addition of creating fourteen theatrical productions—some of which feature Rezza as solo performer—they have co-directed several feature-length films presented at international festivals, authored books, exhibited works in art galleries and created several television shows. Their work has toured in France, Spain, the United States, Russia, and China. After receiving several honours during their career, including the Special Ubu Prize (2013), Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella were awarded the “Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement” by the Venice Biennale in 2018.
I first encountered Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella in the 1990s through their television shows. They presented their short movies where Rezza performed different personas and Mastrella was in charge of the shooting and the visual compositions. They later gained broader attention with Troppolitani [Too-politan] (1999–2000), a series of television episodes, each set in different locations (the train station, the cemetery, the school, the employment office, etc.), where Rezza would interview passers-by, at times orchestrating conversations amongst them.
Their artistic cooperation began in the late 1980s and represents a unique artistic partnership. Their performances are hard to define; they usually consist of series of situations, which are simultaneously different and yet linked to one another. While Rezza works on the script and on the performance—supported by the long-time assistant Massimo Camilli—Mastrella designs timeless habitats,1 which are characterized by elementary and simple shapes (neat structures and elegant bands of fabric) that over the course of the performances are moved and rearranged into different settings. Mastrella denies being a set designer; instead she considers herself a visual artist whose habitats are the product of her research on images and shapes. Similarly, Rezza rejects the idea of being an actor—a role perceived as obliged to serve a character—and identifies himself as a performer, a role that instead does not require him to identify with the personality of a character.
Rezza and Mastrella also work independently. Antonio Rezza has published several books—Non cogito ergo digito [I don’t think hence I digit], (1998) Ti squamo [I peel you] (1999), So(n)no [Sleep] (2005)2, Credo in un solo oblio [I believe in one Oblivion] (2007). His most recent film Il Cristo in gola [The Christ in the throat] was released in 2022. That same year, Flavia Mastrella also released her documentary La legge: Video-lettura della Costituzione italiana recitata dagli animali con la voce del padrone [The Law: Video-reading of Italian constitution played by animals with voices of their owners] (2022).
The following conversation covers their multidisciplinary art from the beginning of their shared career to their most recent show, Hybris (2022). I spoke with Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella over the phone in January and February of 2022. The transcription of the interview has been edited for length and clarity.
For more information on RezzaMastrella’s work, visit https://www.rezzamastrella.com/.
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Carlo Alberto Petruzzi (CAP):
You have been working together since 1987. How did you meet?
Flavia Mastrella (FM):
Antonio and I lived in two adjacent towns near Rome where almost all people interested in the arts knew each other. At the time, I had a studio and I was working on paintings, sculptures, and photography. I was painting frescos in private homes to make a living and Antonio contacted me seeking advice for an exhibition. I went to see him at his theatre, was very impressed, and wanted to work with him.
CAP:
Your art encompasses theatre, cinema, television, and literature. How did you start?
FM:
We started working in art galleries. Our first photo exhibition was I visi . . . goti [a wordplay between “Visigoths” and “Visi” meaning “Faces” in Italian] which explored the different possibilities of Antonio’s facial expressions. He had started with pictures taken in photo booths, but I suggested that he use a professional photographer instead. We worked with “Fotogramma,” a photography gallery that eventually allowed us to exhibit video installations such as Suppietij and Zero a zero, which were very popular in the 1990s. During those exhibitions, Antonio would often give performances.
We then met the director of a gallery who also worked as an author for RAI [Italian National Broadcast] and gave us the opportunity to work in television producing some short videos. In the first years of the 1990s, we presented some of our short movies, shot in VHS or in Super 8, to Festivals of Independent Cinema in Bellaria and Torino. We would do some short existential stories, addressing universal themes through very earthy characters and combining Antonio’s body with shapes that I would create. These works would take shape from a script written by Antonio, while I would take care of the filming. We would edit together. We ended up becoming specialists in this genre; we even received commissions and some awards, which enabled us to buy new equipment. We also made some medium-length films, one of which, De Civitate Rei, was inspired by the story of a Jesuit, Paolo Segneri who, while preaching sermons, would order hundreds of people to self-flagellate. We also told stories of characters struck by divine justice. We shot it in Calcata, a city of art close to Viterbo, with the help of the local population. In 1991, we made Confusus, our first full-length film.
In the same year, we rented Teatro San Genesio, a theatre in Rome, which could host 200–300 spectators and we put on a few performances of I Vichinghi elettronici [The Electronic Vikings] there.
CAP:
So, you didn’t begin making theatre until later?
FM:
In reality, we wanted to make theatre from the beginning. Having a different aesthetic from the one that dominated at that time, which aimed at reassuring the viewer, we worked on exhibitions and cinema while waiting to find a proper space where we could perform. I began creating stage pictures made of fabric that could be assembled both in a two-meter space and in one that was ten meters. We started by putting on our shows in very small places and we drew our audience from our past exhibitions. The first time that we went to a Roman branch of the Arcigay [Italy’s first gay organization] for a show, we found many people who had been to our exhibitions, and it was the first time that we could install four meters of stage pictures. Thanks to this flexibility, we worked with stage pictures until Io [I] (1998) and Fotofinish [Photo finish] (2003) in which stage pictures coexisted with “mutants”—parts of a picture that could be detached from the set to become an object or a costume.
CAP:
What is your way of working in theatre?
FM:
I work on habitat, while Antonio works on the script of a show. Later we both compose the sequence and movements.
Antonio Rezza (AR):
We separate during the first creative step and there is no contact or communication between us. Critics cannot accept such a method since they don’t understand relational anarchy, which is the premise of a political anarchy.
CAP:
How does gender function in your collaboration?
AR:
Male and female are the only differences that are granted to us. I never gave any weight to what lays between our legs.
FM:
We’ve worked together since 1987 and we are not married. We have a deep and inexplicable understanding. Many journalists have defined us as a couple, giving me a secondary role. Fortunately, something has changed recently but this is always a tricky topic. In our works, Antonio can represent men, women, boys, girls, old men, old women and through his androgynous body, we are able to represent the feminine and masculine in human reality.
Figure 1. A. Rezza, Io, 1998 © Flavia Mastrella
Figure 2. A. Rezza, 7-14-21-28, 2009 © Flavia Mastrella
CAP:
How would you describe your “habitats”?
FM:
A habitat is a place in which to live, a fragmented and metaphorically small world. Here Antonio, like a shaman, recalls the memory of the body, improvising his stories that are composed of fragments. The habitat is composed of sculptures, which through ancestral and contemporary forms depict, without realism, the reality that surrounds us. I use the language of images and colours while Antonio expresses himself with his body and spoken language. Together we create a flow of information that opposes our contemporary world. There are no bosses between us: ours is a poetics of compromises. When we begin work on a new performance we work separately, and we try to amaze each other. If the audience is also amazed, then that means our work has been successful.
CAP:
What is your relationship with the habitat?
AR:
Habitats are artworks that are independent from shows and are rightly exhibited in galleries. I don’t know about them before the beginning of the rehearsals and hence can live with them only for a limited period of time. This way of working prevents me from imposing my work on Flavia’s and vice versa.
CAP:
You wrote once that “Word is the prosecution of the body.” How does this affect your being on stage?
AR:
This is due to a temperament that I have had since I was a kid. I have always moved relentlessly. Everything that I say is mediated by movement. I can’t even speak while being still. Especially in performative action, my way of speaking is always linked to the body in endless motion. I believe that a word coming out of a moving body is a purer word.
CAP:
Flavia, how do you choose the materials for your habitats?
FM:
I try to use materials that are easily available, and I transform objects that I find in supermarkets or on the beaches of Anzio. I also make use of fashionable fabrics. For example, in 1998, Gianfranco Ferré made suits from transparent plastic. I used a transparent fabric to simulate the page of a book in Io, which was the sole stage painting that Antonio ever asked me to do. For Io, I also used African fabric, the taffeta in pure silk and other synthetic fibres that were fashionable at the end of the nineties. In Fotofinish, the totems supporting the paintings are in steel and aluminium and emit a sound close to the jingle of sailboat masts which sway with the sea waves in a harbour. The paintings were done in cotton and the movable sculptures were made of steel, found objects, synthetic fabrics and elasticized tulle, which was something new for those years. To materialize the light in Fratto_X [Over X] (2012), I created a nine meters long band of fabric made of a very light flesh-coloured synthetic fabric, which was supported by hooks of rusty iron and wood. Here the bands of fabric give shape to anthropomorphic bodies. We developed the habitat of Fratto_X to create Il bacio [The Kiss], a performance realized during the Masterclass that we held when we were awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. I brought four nine-meter bands of different elasticized fabrics to Venice that could be fixed to the ground along with bamboo canes, plungers, and some mops with which to wash the floor. We fabricated the performance in twenty days. Seeing fabrics put into motion by twenty performers was really an unforgettable experience. In 2015, we created Anelante [Longing]. The habitat was composed of wooden frames lined with red velvet and black Velcro that balanced each other so as to form a wall. As the performance went on, the wall was disassembled and transformed into different objects and architectures. Our game is the transformation of shapes and meanings.
CAP:
The objects of your habitats are polyvalent. How do you conceive them?
FM:
They are conceived with the intention to communicate with the unconscious. To create these objects, I was inspired by Rorschach’s blots. I am interested in the psychology of colour and shape. Nothing is real in my habitats. I desire to give an oneiric idea of reality, which could be open to different interpretations and, above all, drag the viewer into a fantastic, ironic, and thinking world which, thanks to Antonio’s presence and his poetics, reaches the pinnacle of interpretative freedom.
CAP:
What is the role of light in your works?
AR:
We purposely performed our first shows with fixed white lights, because we thought that light is often only needed to create an atmosphere. At that time, we believed that we should create an atmosphere out of what was happening on the stage, without any external help. Even music can have the same function: it can be evocative; it can amplify artificial feelings . . . Over time we reconsidered the use of light and we started exploring that language.
FM:
For our first shows, I conceived of the stage pictures as having very colourful fabrics of varied materials. They could be used in any space and suggested landscapes, architectures, and could transform themselves into costumes. The light was always fixed and diffused but fabrics would react in different ways to it. Fotofinish was a work in white. That was our first work where we had another performer on stage and for which we planned the light design. 7–14–21–28 (2009) featured a habitat in the shape of an ideogram, which used metal and fabric surrounded by sound sculptures. The dominant color was red. For Fratto_X, I spent three years photographing light in movement with my digital camera, drawing out my curiosity to distract and influence my ideas. I worked restlessly and, at last, I created a habitat that surprised me the most. I could materialize rays of light with very light and thin fabrics, that were worn by Antonio to animate anthropomorphic bodies.
CAP:
Where do you get inspiration to create the habitats of your shows?
Figure 3. A. Rezza, Fotofinish, 2003 © Giulio Mazzi
FM:
The structures of Io and Pitecus (1995) are inspired by works of Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Robert Morris and by medieval art. Io was affected by the influence of the digital in the choice of colours and shapes and derived from a fascination for the work of Fausto Melotti. Fotofinish springs by L’emozione fatta suono [The emotion made sound], a series of sound sculptures that I created with objects found between 1996 and 2006.
CAP:
In the creation of your works, you hold several open rehearsals. Does the presence of the audience during the rehearsals affect your work?
AR:
Rehearsals are my favourite moment as they are more linked to the gesture, to improvisation, to the shamanic rite. The audience is so close that it is impossible not to draw rhythmic indications (I am not talking here about the content) from the audience. Having open rehearsals enables us to greatly reduce the time for the creation of a rhythm, even though the show is not created by rhythm alone.
FM:
The presence of an audience is important also for reasons of material energy. The enjoyment of the public produces a reaction, which can either be codified or remain surprising. What surprises is, of course, excellent.
CAP:
The topic of rhythm is very important for you.
AR:
We believe our art to be closer to making percussion than to theatre. Our work shares a lot with music; we use theatre for its convenience. For us, theatre is a way to be free in a space enclosed within four walls.
CAP:
Can we discuss your ideas on the use of fragments?
AR:
There is an excerpt by Emil Cioran3 where he explains that every author who follows a narrative idea is then forced to go along with his idea and hence deprives himself of freedom. If I begin a story and have to remain faithful to it based on that original idea, I become the slave of that idea. In so doing, I deprive myself of possible alternatives that could take me elsewhere. The train of thought is always one that hits you. There are also people who do this in a sublime way like Kubrick in Barry Lyndon, a movie that is narrative even in its aesthetic beauty. I had already thought about this and was happy to read it in Cioran. One has to think like the great thinkers, while one remains different in what one does. The aesthetic must differ, but the thought has to resemble those of great minds. Everyone who is pleased with his own idea is trapping himself. This is why it is harder to tell a fragmentary lie, because a fragmented idea does not give you the chance to serve yourself. An idea merely forces you to follow the brutality of your first illumination that guides you until the end. Ideas are endless, one does not have to use the first one, however beautiful it may appear. If we are enslaved to a plot, we are made never to go beyond it. The plot and the author form a criminal association and always go hand in hand because one protects the other.
CAP:
Talking about your theatre, people often mention the notion of ritual. What does that mean for you?
AR:
A rite is something that repeats itself every time possibly in a different way because we are never the same. A shamanic rite does not tolerate thoughts that could soil it. Everyday life spoils what could be an uncontaminated and never-ending speed.
Figure 4. A. Rezza, Fratto_X, 2012, © Giulio Mazzi
Figure 5. A. Rezza, I. Bellavista, Fratto_X, 2012, © Giulio Mazzi
CAP:
Even during extremely uncanny moments of your shows, the audience often reacts by laughing. Does that bother you?
AR:
Our choice to make people laugh is a political decision. Laughing is something very close to insurrection; even at a physical level, when you laugh you move your entire body. It is harder to make people laugh than to make them cry. This happens not through silly jokes, but through the decomposition of language. Crying happens when one evokes a moving feeling. By crying, you go nowhere, you only pander to those who make you cry. I don’t like emotional works; I find them to be entirely in bad faith. Those who cry don’t cry for what they did. I can laugh about what I say. I believe this to be a bursting political proposal which joins Flavia’s work on the language of space and is something that by decontextualizing the action and increasing the irony, makes our work absolutely original. This is clearly an anarchic form of political protest, which absolutely does not acknowledge the existence of a hierarchic power and suggests a personal path against hierarchy and command. This is the rejection of command, the rejection of power, and the rejection of hierarchy. This happens through forms, through words, through movements of the body. Our works should speak for themselves without me needing to explain them. My only regret is this: when one does an interview, he/she is forced to be clearer. It is clear that we are always less than what we do; every author is less than what he/she does if he/she does things well. I may like what I say but I cannot think of it as being on the same level as what I do.
CAP:
Why do you oppose the public funding of art?
AR:
The State has to keep spaces alive and pay the staff. A stagehand or a technician is a person who, with a lot of dignity, works to live, hence the state has to take charge of them. In the case of an artist, someone who makes his work their raison d’être, the state should not pay for the commission of a work. This enables the artist to be more relaxed, to have his ass covered, which results in his work coming out in a far more modest way than what he could have accomplished by working without the guarantee of receiving funds. Without money behind him an artist works in another way. I can say this having always done so.
FM:
Many artists have become artistic directors of theatres and now fund their own works or those of a happy few with public money. They are often not interested in investing in new artistic expressions and they produce allegedly successful practitioners who are forced to churn out a new show every year. If an artist does not have a life, he/she ends up by always saying the same thing. There is a moment for research and a moment for work.
CAP:
Have you ever thought of directing an opera?
AR:
There are many people who direct operas who also attend our performances. I don’t understand why one hasn’t been offered to us. As an independent artist, it is hard to receive a commission. Unfortunately, this also depends on the support that one has at an institutional level.
Figure 6. A. Rezza, Ivan Bellavista, Manolo Muoio, Chiara Perrini, Enzo di Norscia, Anelante, 2015 © Flavia Mastrella
Figure 7. F. Mastrella, A. Rezza, Bahamut(h), 2006, © Stefania Saltarelli
FM:
I would like to work on a contemporary opera, which we could totally invent. My dream is to realize a tribal musical.
CAP:
Did you use subtitles when you performed abroad? How did the public react to your performances?
AR:
We make a wholly international theatre. When we were abroad, the reaction of the audience was the same as the one that we had while in Italy. We used subtitles in New York, where I also did ten minutes in English. In Spain, with Pitecus the entire performance was in Spanish. In France, I did about ten minutes in French and then we continued with subtitles, while in Russia the whole play was done with simultaneous translation, as they do not use subtitles. It worked really well and, for instance, in the number sequence of 7–14–21–28, the public was laughing in the same way they would laugh in Italy.
FM:
When we staged Pitecus in New York in 2017, we were shocked by the positive reception we received. Our way of communicating is halfway between the visual arts and theatre. It is not even performance – it is another way of conceiving of communication, which makes use of influences from traditional representations. It is a distortion with unusual visual elements and Antonio’s body and voice. A few years ago, a young English theatre manager came to say “hi” at the end of Fotofinish. Even without knowing Italian well, he got carried away by the rhythm and was stunned by the energy that came from the show.
CAP:
Do you especially admire anyone in the world of contemporary arts?
AR:
Were he still alive, I would have said Artaud. I could mention Carmelo Bene, but this could forge an extremely dangerous parallel between us. This would be quite inappropriate as there could not be two aesthetics that are more distant than ours. In Italy, I really appreciate Alessandro Bergonzoni and Franco Maresco because they are people who only work for themselves.
FM:
I am stimulated by many people of the arts such as Yayoi Kusama, Mona Hatoum, Pipilotti Rist, Fluxus, the Futurists, and Alexander Calder. In theatre, Manuela Kuster-mann, who is now director of Teatro Vascello and was the first woman to get naked on stage in Italy, Eleonora Danco, Fabiana Iacozzilli, Marta Meneghetti, Carmelo Bene and the theatre of the so-called roman caves of the sixties. In cinema, I enjoy Franco Maresco, Luca Ferri, Costanza Quatriglio Ken Loach, Kim Ki-duk, and Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paolo Brunatto, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Andrej Tarkovskij. I really like seeing all sorts of films. Seeing what other people do gives me vitality and a sense of utility.
CAP:
Can you describe your last play that will debut in Spoleto in July 2022?
AR:
Hybris is a virtuosity. It is a door that opens to nothing, that modifies the space and makes reality in stripes: in stripes not in stars.
FM:
Hybris is the one who challenged the gods. He is an arrogant and dangerous being. It is set around a door that opens to the void and closes on nothingness. The door has lost its room, but humans dully keep using it for what it used to be.
Footnotes
1. Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella refer to the set as “habitat”, a term that emphasizes its connotation as a space that can host life. The concept of “habitat” is discussed further in the course of the interview.
2. The title is a word game between the words “Sonno” [Sleep] and “sono” [I am].
3. Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) was a Romanian philosopher who spent most of his life in Paris and published works both in Romanian and French.