Harold Pinter
Peter Stein

THE HOMECOMING

by Harold Pinter
translation Alessandra Serra

director Peter Stein

set design Ferdinand Woegerbauer

costume design Anna Maria Heinreich
light design Roberto Innocenti

assistant director Carlo Bellamio

characters and performers

Max Paolo Graziosi

Lenny Alessandro Averone

Sam Elia Schilton
Joey Rosario Lisma

Teddy Andrea Nicolini

Ruth Arianna Scommegna

production

Teatro Metastasio Stabile della Toscana

Spoleto56 Festival dei 2Mondi

stage manager Marco Serafino Cecchi

chief engineer Marco Mencacci

chief electrician Massimo Galardini

electrician Gabriele Mazzara Bologna

phonic Daniele Santi

seamstress Annamaria Clemente, Chiara Lanzillotta

production coordinator Francesca Bettalli

company administrator Camilla Borraccino

press office Franca Mezzani

photos Pino Le Pera

graphic design and editing Francesco Marini

set design made by Laboratorio del Teatro Metastasio

chief stagehand Tobia Grassi

stagehands Furio Barbani, Tommaso De Donno

property man Enrico Capecchi

documentation video Bam Container Associazione Culturale (Nadia Baldi)

assistant director on stage Gilda Ciao

"Ever since I saw the premiere in London, nearly 50 years ago, I’ve been wanting to stage The homecoming.

Perhaps it is Pinter’s darkest play, dealing with the profound dangers within human relationships, and even more in the precariousrelatio n between sexes. The jungle where the play takes place is naturally the family. Formal relations and quite stable behaviors become fatal aggressiveness and sexual violence, when one of the brothers with his new wife returns home from America. All the men’s sexual obsessions in this snaky family are channeled upon the only woman in the house. In the fantasy of the men, in their behavior, she becomes a whore and cannot but appeal to revenge by accepting the role and oversatisfying their cravings. As always in Pinter’s endings, everything remains open. The final image shows an imposing woman with whining men begging at her feet and nobody on stage or in the audience knows what really will happen.This is a play exclusively for actors. The idea for this production came from the cast of The Demons which are accustomed to working closely together. So we truly hope that our work can do justice to the play."

Peter Stein

In 1965 a very young Peter Stein attended the world premiere in London of The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, staged by Peter Hall.

A few months later, Stein collaborated in Monaco of Bavaria, and more precisely with the prestigious Kammerspiele, as assistant and playwright, for the staging of the German premiere of the same text.

In the past five decades that separate us from that extraordinary event in London, the world has changed. But Stein is certainly not one of the figures who was carried away by the rushing stream of changes dictated by history without reacting, on the contrary he tried to influence them for a lifetime, and, in the world of theater, to correct them, often managing to impose his measure.

With the international consecration of his two Schaubuehne (the first theater located in Halleschen Ufer, where Stein arrived in 1970 with his extraordinary actors, and the one built for him in Lehniner Platz according to his requests and inaugurated in 1980, which is still today considered as the most modern

theater in the world), the dialogic balance of the Theatre of Berlin changed radically, not only because the Theatre of East Berlin was in some way influenced, but above all because from that moment West Berlin became de facto the cultural capital of federal Germany, taking the leadership away from cities like Hamburg, Monaco and Frankfurt that had nursed that aspiration.

In 1985, Stein seems to feel the end of a cycle that had lasted 15 years, together with the change of the political structure and therefore leaves the theater he had founded, causing disputes with no end. He begins to travel, staging in Vienna, Zurich, Paris, London, Moscow, Hanover (the great Faust project), in Italy, but also returning to Berlin, more precisely to the Berliner Ensemble. From 1991 to 1997 he was superintendent of the theater sector of the Salzburger Festspiele.

Peter Stein has lived in Umbria, in San Pancrazio, for twenty years and we are convinced that the Italian theater has only sporadically been able to take advantage of this prestigious presence.

The Teatro Metastasio Stabile of Tuscany and the Festival of 2Worlds of Spoleto are delighted to have joined forces and be at Peter Stein’s disposal, along with his wonderful actors and collaborators, so as to produce and stage this Homecoming by Pinter.

A dream which has matured during a lifetime.

Giorgio Ferrara

Artistic Director Festival of 2Worlds in Spoleto

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