In Fede e Luce groups, theater happens often. Men and women, mothers and fathers, small children and friends who tower two meters tall—all become actors ready to take on any role, tragic or comic, under the direction of an equally improvised director. Around the stage, the others divide the remaining work: costumers, set designers, lighting technicians, prop masters. Everything unfolds as it would in a real theater, but with even greater enthusiasm and excitement. It might seem like any other pastime, a way to celebrate, a game—and at first, for us, it was only that. But gradually we discovered how important this pastime is, and how many discoveries this game allows us to make.
First: joy. Even boys who are usually serious, a bit withdrawn into themselves, come alive when they dress up, when they change how they look, when they become someone other than themselves. Someone who makes people laugh, or frightens them, or is powerful, beautiful, important—whatever they wish to be in that moment.
And then discovering that you matter. Realizing that you belong to a group where each person has a precise role, where you are a necessary part of the whole. Every actor is a small stone in the mosaic, and everyone must work together so that at the end of all that effort comes success, applause, compliments for everyone equally—and everyone loves receiving them.
And the charge that theater gives you—the push to step outside yourself, to forget your limitations, your difficulty expressing yourself or moving, so that you can become what you are meant to represent through appearance, gesture, words. You forget yourself to become the character you have been given to bring to life for others, for those watching you; for your fellow actors who need your character so their own characters can come alive; but also for yourself, because you like the character and it depends on you whether it lives, whether it makes people laugh or cry, whether it draws applause.
Freedom. The more the young actor is left free to express himself with words, gestures, and ways of moving that he invents and discovers within himself, the more easily he will create the character and make it believable. And in doing so, without quite realizing it, he expresses without inhibition his inner world—the things that press inside him and that he cannot always say, or does not wish to say; his desire to speak, to communicate, to be looked at and understood, to be admired.
And so we have seen on the stages of Fede e Luce God the Creator represented with marvelous simplicity, and biblical prophets; stories of love and joy; speaking suns, dancing clouds and rains, witches and giants; anxious mothers and peevish grandmothers.
In short, a whole cast of characters who rendered, without knowing it, a great gift to many of us.
The Fede e Luce Theater Group, 1979