ORFEO BAGGIO
From now on, each week you'll be able to follow the evolutions of our project "Baggio, with Passion". This project includes three folders. A theater play, "Orfeo Baggio", who shall be directed by Alain Besset et le Chok théâtre. A novel : "Baggio & his Double", by Mario Morisi. And a documentary the title of which hasn't been chosen yet but shall show you in detail the whole adventure. Whoever you might be : friend, journalist, sponsor, productor, Roby Baggio fan, welcome in that odyssey the episods of which " fortunate or not " you'll be able to follow step by step. Thank you so much for the interest. Casa Morisi

Birth of a project
All started in a frosty night of 1999 in Besançon (F). Out of a week of representations including Artaud & Boukovski, Alain Besset, irritated by the wicked behaviour of a collegue, is having a look on a manuscript signed by M.M, which he soon asks him to read out loud. Why doesn't he write for theater ?
M.M. takes the challenge on. The subject will be about the confrontation of dream and realty, the grief not to be believed, the illegitimate loves between beauty and non-sense. We all have something from Gulliver, haven't we ?
Among M.M.'s Masters and Models, there's a special one : Roberto Baggio, the worldfamous football star. On border line between popular Italy and its dreams of glory, poetry and earthy fortunes, "The Divine Ponytail" is the accomplishment of the child's dream which M.M. borrowed from his Father Giovanni, a dream he only flirted with having been a promice of the Game.
M.M. collects hundreds of articles, thousands of texts, editorials and witnesses. He dives into a fan's skin, into a disperate groupie. So was created "Orfeo Baggio", the descent to Hell ot a fool who's taken his hero by the words and want to steal his place. Accused to be a murderer, the mythoman grips himself to his dream, resisting to intimidation and evidences. He's the one he loves and nobody can break this matter of fact.
Of course, the subject is to rich, to vast.Too much material has been collected. M.M. build an essay from it, a kind of historical work. He decides to treat Baggio's life and carreer as a work of art, the aesthetical research of an artist. Why wouldn't he talk about Baggio as one writes about Victor Hugo or Caravaggio ? Why wouldn't he reflect about Italy by the end of the XXth Century ? 600 pages are soon written.
Here comes the IRIMM, a movie and video institute. Attracted by M.M.'s work and adventure, Thierry Rousseau, the executive director, makes him a proposal. Would he accept to be filmed during his quest of Father Earth and Return to Childhood ? It would be the tale of a italian workman's son, football addict, about the birth of his play, his first novels and various italian expeditions ; the pilgrimage of a man thrown to the conquest of his myth. But would he keep the courage to confront with him ?
Sponsored by a Stendhal Bourse from the Foreign Ministery of France, M.M. has started his work. He shall go to Italy in Mars. Everything is planned.
Yesterday a letter flew to Roberto Baggio, who inspired the whole Odissey.
The real adventure has started.
"Orfeo Baggio"
Texte de Mario Morisi
à l'intention du Chok Theâtre

ORFEO BAGGIO, the theater play
In an atmosphere of riot and end of the world a mature man dressed in footballer is caught in the midst of the ruins not far from a librarist's corpse. Thrown into a police appartment, the poor bloke claims after his football and sportsbag, refuses to answer the questions, eventually pretends to be the one he wears the shirt of : "R. Baggio". Torn between this Baggio he pretends to be for the coppers, and the one he brillantly plays out for Old Ali, a sympathetic Algerian kept in the cell with him, the spectator is the witness and judge of an allegory of which he progressively gets the key.

UNDERCOVER
Do you know Roberto Baggio ? The cops who arrested him neither. "Bunch of sods ! Give me my football back ! Without my ball I don't exist at all !" He's grotesque, Roberto, wrapped in his blue jersey, with his hairy chins, ridiculous pony-tail and unique stocking. His documents ? He ain't got any and takes advantages of it :
"You only get my words, you're bound to believe me !"
Outside it's an uproar. No need to tip "anthropometer.com", everything's off, no more electricity, no more personal computers, no more civilisation. The coppers " a slimy old inspector and a smart policewoman " do their job in the midst of outdoors explosions. They work the suspect out, they never leave him still, they treat him like a meatball.
"I'm Gulliver, I'm Alladin !" shouts Roberto out, his pants down the heels.
"Don't touch him, don't hurt him !" protests Old Ali, his companion of infortune. What he says is beautiful !"
Might be. But then, who would have raped and killed the "Lady of the Books" who's been found out dead a few yards beside juggling Roberto ?
Patiently, Nemesis waits for its due.

THREE THEMES AND AN ORIGINALITY


First Theme :
When Swift's Gulliver returns from his liliputian adventures, he tries to convince the member of the Institute. Nobody believes him. Wether what he tells is not true, he's mad. He's thrown into a jail. He has to cover the walls of his celle up with his memories not to deny himself and succomb to madness. Anyone having had to bear a single hour of emprisonment knows how one feels in such a case : to tell the truth and not being in order to prove it, until the final horror : to be deprived of one's freedom when being innocent.

Second Theme :
Desorder threatens the world. The only way the States use to protect themselves is rationalty. Therefore their agents try to discover the true from the false using "Vernunft" and logical processes. What happens to a suspect who, on the contrary, would appeal to emotional intelligence and imagination instead ? Someone who's so much moved by beauty and dream as Robert might be able to kill and to rape ?

Third Theme :
"Orfeo Baggio" is an allegory. In a world threatened by chaos and death (G-8 in Genova, Twin Towers, Middle-East, Indian-Pakistani conflict) how could dreamings and aesthetics survive ? Aren't they, in war time, an enemy to the State and the World ? Worth ! Aren't all the people who are not fighting hard against official enemies latening the proceeding of the dominant thinking and then its enemies themselves ?

Originality
The sentences used in a big part of the play have really been pronounced by or about the real Roberto Baggio, one of the best footballer ever. Which leads to a fourth level of understanding of "Orfeo Baggio" : The masterpieces of sportsmen being imbedded and imprisoned within moments as brief as the glimpse of an eye, the real Roberto not more than the fake one would be in order to convince state officers deprived of an adequate knowledge and adapted technology.