Luigi: the 1st diary entry
ICYMI (In Case You Missed It)
- if you missed last week’s episode, I’ll bring you up to speed. In 2021, one of my students, a Czech screenwriter and director called Eliška, wrote a feature film script called Luigi, set in Sardinia - and she based Bob, one of the characters, on me - and she wanted me to play him!
Eliška at Munich Airport. (pic by me)
Fast forward to today
- and after yesterday, flying from Lisbon to Munich to Olbia, the main cast is assembled in Cala Gonone on the east coast of Sardinia for the first full read of the script. The script is in Italian, Sardo (the Sardinian language), Czech, Slovakian, French and English. It’s mesmerising, listening to this whirlwind of different voices, speech patterns, accents -and the gags are great, in every language!
Jana (Věra), on the balcony. (pic by Adam Struhala)
In the morning
- it’s joyous, being right in the thick of rehearsal after so long, and it was funny and sad and moving and it went awfully well: in fact it went so well, we’re doing some more tomorrow!
L-R: Francesco (Luigi), Peter (Juraj), Me (Bob), Benny (Fernandel) (pic by Adam Struhala)
In the afternoon
- Fra and me (Luigi and Bob) spent a few hours rehearsing our scenes - with Eliška and Adam making loads of positive suggestions and adding lines and rewriting and moving stuff around. It was marvellous fun, but kind of tiring (when I’m teaching on italki, I sit on my backside all day - this is actually getting me on my feet and moving!) I still can’t quite believe this is happening. I can’t thank Eliška and Adam enough for giving me this opportunity.
Fra, thinking. (pic by me)
In the evening we had a marvellous dinner, prepared by the wonderful Krystýna and Kryštof - and then it was my costume fitting. I have no photos of this - mainly because I fear you may not be able to control yourselves if you saw what Bob will be wearing. You’ll have to come and see the film, won’t you?
Finally, I’ve added some more poetry stuff to the Lots of Stuff page. It’s a new section called Broadening the Mind, and aptly, it’s all about travel. The last poem, The View, is brand new (I only wrote it last night) - and I hope you like it. I hope you like all of them, obviously. Let me know.