PANE E POMODORO by Gabriele Micalizzi Pane and Pomodoro is a beach in Bari, where hundreds of family gather in summer time to celebrate a holiday ritual that is repeated in the same way every year. Pane and Pomodoro is the stage of an Italian burlesque, a tragicomic comedy whose protagonists play a role that belongs to them since decades, and that represents the prototype of the 'stock Italian': the one that accepts - rather appreciates - everything, as long as it is frivolous. They are characters in search of an author mocking models of which they are imitators and, at the same time (unconscious) inspirers; odd characters showing off their genuineness with arrogance and without any shame. Pane and Pomodoro is an anthropological reportage in which the author observes and catalogs the features, the habits and the goodnesses of the contemporary 'italian mammal', wondering about the paradoxical emotions of simpathy and repulsion that are caused by the view of this theatre of the absurd.
