Il fondo del Sacco

"The pursuit of happiness" - this dazzling lure resounded at the beginning of the last century from America to Europe to the most remote valleys of Ticino. At that time, many Swiss people fled the bitter reality of starvation and misery and left the barren everyday life of the Ticino mountains to try their luck in faraway California and earn a living by the work of their hands. Some come back, others stay forever.

"Il fondo del sacco" by Plinio Martini is the story of Gori, a young man from the Maggia Valley who leaves his first love, his family and friends, to turn his back on hunger and the omnipresence of death and finally earn money in distant America: "... there are God knows how many countries in the world where it is easier."

After 20 years, Gori, plagued by bitter homesickness and disappointed hopes, returns to the Maggia Valley and finds his former home very changed. Maddalena is dead, her mother is sick and her father is old and frail. Gori has to painfully realize that the homeland he longed for in the distance has become alien to him.

"Il fondo del sacco" is a story of emigration, of the illusions associated with it, of false hopes and bitterness, of indelible love and homesickness that never goes away.

"We were an island out of time, a last handful of flour at the bottom of the sack - dal fondo del sacco."

After several readings in the form of research at the Teatro Sociale Bellinzona in October 2017, "Il fondo del sacco" has become a play on the 40th anniversary of Plinio Martini's death, in which the well-known Ticino actress, Margherita Saltamacchia, performs a montage of various excerpts from the work, but also reads it aloud and is sensitively accompanied by Daniele Dell'Agnola on the accordion.