Squabbles

In a lively fishing town on the coast of the Austro-Hungarian Istria we encounter a “noisy group of fishermen, sailors and women, whose only place to carry on a conversation is the street.” Similar to the Chioggia of Goldoni’s youth, where “as a court clerk’s assistant /.../ he learnt about the townsfolk and their customs, their language, their liveliness and their characteristic malice” and used his impression of them to write Le baruffe chiozzotte (1762, Squabbles in Chiogga).

Cotton candy, a little tobacco and a talent for defiance ... and in front of us is Predrag Lucič’s adaptation of the “fateful” neighbourly dispute that lashes like the wind until it drops and soughs into a truce. But this truce doesn’t last long. “The problems of fishery squabbles or baruffe is of course a pertinent one,” says director Vito Taufer, who nevertheless doesn’t want to interpret them as “a daily political satire, but they will be a metaphor of today’s multiethnic and multicultural world. We’ll show how the authorities use the little man, a fisherman pushed to the margin, and manipulate him like a peon on the political chessboard. All the local fishy businesses and baruffe serve politicians who open this drawer when it serves them.”

One of Goldoni’s loveliest and most popular comedies, which long ago claimed its home on our side of the Adriatic, its transplantation from the Venetian laguna to the Istrian peninsula has now encouraged a coproduction that links four professional littoral theatres from three countries. The performance of the story of the squabbles, which serves as a reflection for the querulous present, can – thanks to its multilingual playfulness – rise to a new level of understanding.

Imbued with a Mediterranean temperament, this play of Babylonian linguistic diversity was directed by Vito Taufer, a director of many exceptional performances in Slovenian and international theatres. His numerous performances have been staged in littoral theatres, some even as premières at the Summer Festival of the Littoral or as guest performances there.

Open-air premières 21 June 2017 in Koper (Martinčev trg), 23 June in Pula (the courtyard of the Historical and Maritime Museum of Istria), 25 June 2017 in Nova Gorica (Kromberk Castle amphitheatre)