by Pietro Grasso

with Sebastiano Lo Monaco

stage version Nicola Fano
theatre adaptation Margherita Rubino
director Alessio Pizzech

music Dario Arcidiacono
scenography Giacomo Tringali
costumes Cristina Darold
lighting design Luigi Ascione

stage manager Mauro Milani
electrician Stefano Sebastianelli
sound engineer Alessio Pasquazi
tailor Sabrina Solimando

production Sicilia Teatro Associazione  
production manager Tiziano Pelanda
organization Santi Lo Monaco

When did the new Mafia start? How has it changed life in Sicily and in Italy? What still remains to be done and hoped by defeating it? These are just a few of the questions that the national anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso asks himself in his book “Per non morire di mafia” which is proposed in a stage version by Sebastiano Lo Monaco.
If Falcone and Borsellino theorized that to fight the Mafia you must know it, their “heir”, involved for thirty years working against organized crime, adds that today to fight the Mafia, it is essential to have the correct perception of its danger. Therefore, from the national anti-Mafia prosecutor’s office, the institution which coordinates the domestic and international investigations, Pietro Grasso follows the seasons of the war against the Sicilian dome very bluntly, dealing with delicate relations: the link between Mafia and politics, the clashes within the judiciary, the absence of legislative power and means. Finally, Grasso faces the current network with the ‘ndrangheta and the camorra and draws a map of the new Mafias (Chinese, Russian, Albanian, Nigerian, Columbian) identifying the ways and the tools which will avoid dying from Mafia, not submitting to its power.

As long as the Mafia exists, we must talk about it, argue about it, react. Silence is the oxygen with which the criminal systems reorganize, and the dangerous symbiosis of Mafia, economy and power is strengthened. Today’s silence is bound to make us pay heavily tomorrow, with a stronger Mafia, and less freedom for citizens. 
Pietro Grasso

Not simply a show but a portrait, an emotional investigation, a descent into the vibrant heart of the bright  mind of a man who has devoted and is still devoting his life to crime fighting, for the triumph of lawfulness. (…) A performance which draws interest from the ability to stimulate questions, analysis and a greater awareness in the eyes of the spectator. The character’s cry  is addressed to our conscience:  he wants us to take a stand  and to believe in utopia for the new generations. Therefore, a monologue  which brings the theater back to its civil and evocative role.  A theater capable of designing men, of drawing life experiences which can become models. A theater without intellectualisms that wants to contribute to the recovery of a sense of civilization.  All in the hands of  the actor Sebastiano Lo Monaco with whom, after sharing the experience of “No one knows how” by Pirandello,  I am happy to start this new adventure which sees him confronted with a new textual dimension where his talent, as great heir of the Italian tradition, serves a theatrical event which moves towards contemporaneity.      
Nicola Fano provides a stage version of great lucidity and capacity to be concise, which I will try to exploit with an aware and attentive directorial presence. The actor thus embodies a community.  He  urges us to feel like a community which understands the traits that bind us, to  re-discuss the problems of our present, away from indifference and commonplace clichés, and to reach an analysis which the theater leads not only with its mind but above all with its soul. 
Alessio Pizzech