Spectacular spettacolo

Every August, in the Tuscan village of Anghiari, magic happens. For 10 nights in a row, a local square becomes the stage for a freshly-written play, part of a 23-year-old series called Tovaglia a Quadri. I love it because it is a highly improbable thing—that a village takes the time every year to create a fearless, sharp, witty, and poignant reflection of what it means to be a member of a small Italian village, in today’s world. Written by, acted in, and attended by locals.

Each year, the new production is a full-length musical, staged in a tiny square in town. The buildings around the square are used as sets, with actors popping in and out of windows and doors. In the middle of the square are long tables, covered with checkered tablecloths, where the nightly audience is served a three-course dinner. A new play is written every year—often mere weeks before—ensuring that the topics are current. The name Tovaglia a Quadri means tablecloth (tovaglia), with squares (quadri), but the word quadri also refers to a stage.

This year’s play was Ci Amazzon, which is a play on words of “ci amazzono”—”they are killing us”. It takes place a hundred years in the future after Amazon has won the latest world war, leaving a dystopian landscape of a village in which even the grandmothers are happy to have all their needs met online so that they don’t have to leave the house and talk with each other. It explores the tension of getting exactly what you want versus having fewer choices but a more engaged community.

Prior topics have included Anghiarixit—a referendum to gain independence from Tuscany —because, after all, what has Florence really ever done for Anghiari since 1441, when the Florentines bested the Milanese in The Battle of Anghiari, a crucial battle of the Renaissance? Another year the play provided a scathing and hilarious look at immigration with the villagers all eager to emigrate to Australia to start new lives and businesses, while being terrified of a black teenager who was found on the banks of the Tiber river. The villagers thought he was an African immigrant who fell off a boat in the Mediterranean and washed hundreds of miles upstream in the river. He turned out to be from the next village and had fallen into the river after a night of partying with friends. Another was about a World War II concentration camp located nearby.

The play has been happening every year for 23 years, and is the creation of co-authors Paolo Pennacchini and Andrea Merendelli. Andrea directs. The first few years were experimental, trying things like improvisational comedy. They wrote their first real plot in 1997, and the play featured a character talking about his memories. Paolo told me that in 2010 they decided to shift from looking at the past to try “to explain the things happening around us.” And the current hard-hitting format was born.

The town wildly embraces this annual tradition. There are 130 seats for each of the 10 shows and tickets sell out almost immediately. I went to buy mine the morning the tickets were available, arrived 15 minutes after the office opened, and found myself 66th in line. The entire process took hours!

I’ve noticed that many of the local businesses now sport “Ci Amazzon” stickers in their windows, taking the idea of the latest play into a lasting, physical reminder.

I can’t wait to see what they conjure up next year.

Big cheese

Growing up in the United States, I somehow missed out on learning that there is an Italian sport that involves rolling cheeses. My first clue that my sporting education might not be complete is a photo on the wall of one my favorite workers’ lunch restaurants. In it, the chef is holding a large wheel of cheese. He’s poised to throw it, much as if he were about to roll a bowling ball.

My next brush with cheese rolling happened as I was driving down a Tuscan backroad on the way to the grocery store. I noticed a group of men—including the chef— standing together, looking very serious, all well-armed with large cheeses. I’d like to say that I instantly pulled over to find out more, but wasn’t brave enough—they were having such a good time among friends that it like intruding, and I’m not yet confident enough about my Italian.

The third time I spotted a cheese in play, it was a solitary man, practicing his cheese roll, and I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass. I was with my fluent daughter, and she owed me one because I had just picked her up at the horse stable, so “we” found out when the next competition was happening and asked if we could come and film.

As is appropriate with cheese rolling, my search came full-circle when I interviewed the chef—whose picture hangs in the restaurant—about the basics of the sport. I was surprised that he has only been participating in this sport for three years—so for those of you who think “It is too late for me to learn to roll a cheese” there is hope yet.

Each team of two has a large, flat, hard cheese between them (could be pecorino, asiago, or parmigiano; but all the teams have to use the same kind.) They attach a leather strap around the cheese, which creates a sort of handle, that enables them to launch the cheese, rolling it down the road. The team who cheese goes the farthest with a predetermined number of throws wins.

Cheese rolling is an all-day sport. The day we came out to watch, they had been out rolling cheeses since 8 in the morning and would be doing so until about 7:30 in the evening, covering around 9 kilometers on foot.

Cheese rolling dates from Etruscan times (the local tribes living here pre-Roman times, whom Tuscany was named after). It’s even included in the Federation of Italian Traditional Games and Sports (figest.it), an organization that holds competitions and publishes the rules for about 15 ancient games like, tug of war, cross bow shooting, darts, and very obscure games like morra, which dates to the ancient Egyptians. (For a lovely little blast of morra: https://www.facebook.com/MorraMarche/videos/978697128831911/)

In cheese rolling there are five different weight classes—cheeses ranging from 1.5 kilograms (a little over three pounds) to 25 kilograms (55 pounds). Hurling a 55 pound cheese down the road takes serious training and muscle!

My favorite part is that the rules specify what to do if your cheese breaks during competition. First feed the spectators cheese, then you can replace the cheese and carry on.

Our chef friend says they always serve the cheese after it has had its moment of competition and that it is particularly delicious. The rules dictate that, after the competition, the winner provides everyone else with glasses of wine. But victory is sweet after all, because the victor gets to keep the cheese of the defeated.

The race to be—exactly—on time

I don’t know a lot about races, but I do know that in most, being fastest is key. So I was surprised—and delighted—to discover that the path to victory in our local vintage Vespa race is being very, very punctual. The winning strategy requires finishing the race to the correct hundredth of a second of a specified time. How do you do it? By adhering to the speed limit the whole way.

(As you could well imagine the Italians adore going the speed limit and do so on every opportunity. On a nearby, well-used road the speed limit just dropped from 70 to 50 kph prompting a local firestorm of opinion. A TV station described local drivers as being beset by “panic and rage” at the reduced limit—really? “Panic”?)

For this vintage Vespa race the art of winning is in the precision and preparation. Routes can be tricky, and are often on windy, steep, and even unpaved roads. To add to the challenge, all the Vespas are old—only certain storied racing models from the 1950s and 60s—and likely to break down. Inspired by their rides, some participants pride themselves on using only time-keeping and navigation technology from the period of their Vespa.

This all leads to some very interesting finish-line maneuvers to burn through those all-important seconds if one is slightly too early.