Italy: the transformation of labor at Pirelli at the center of a play

“The factory is a delicate place of activities and relationships, contrast, but mostly dialogue and original syntheses.  (…) Representing its dynamics in the theater is a way of giving the public and all social players the tools to understand a past we’re proud of, and a past and a future everyone wants to be a central part of, with their own responsibility.”  This is how, at a press conference on February 3, Marco Tronchetti Provera, CEO of Pirelli, explained the co-production between Fondazione Pirelli and Piccolo Teatro of the play created by Director Serena Sinigaglia, “Settimo, labor and a factory,” which will premiere tonight, February 7, at the Piccolo Teatro Studio Expo on Via Rivoli (Milan).  Showing until February 19, it is based on 2,000 pages of interviews of workers, technicians and engineers working in Pirelli’s Settimo Torinese, done by Roberta Garruccio, researcher at the Department of Historical Science at the University of Milan between 2009 and 2010, during the move from the old establishments, where the group was present for over 60 years, toward the new state-of-the-art industrial pole which comprises the two establishments (see our dispatch No.  070961).