When Roberto Ciulli talks about the clowns, the White Clown and the Red Clown, the master and his servant, you have his entire philosophy and his program: intellect and emotion, spirit and drive. This encompasses the whole world – and the entire theater, not just that of the Commedia dell'Arte, which is particularly dear to Ciulli, born in Milan in 1934.
Ciulli completed his doctorate on Hegel, performed in tent theater, moved to Germany in 1965, worked as a guest worker, became a director at the Theater Göttingen, and was discovered there for Cologne, where he was the artistic director from 1972 to 1979 alongside Hansgünther Heyme. The collective thought that was in the air at that time never left him. A different system, away from the fixed and rigid structures of municipal theaters, towards mobile and ambulatory forms. Thus, he founded his own theater company, in collaboration with dramaturg Helmut Schäfer and the now deceased set designer Gralf-Edzard Habben.
Since 1981, the Mülheimer Theater an der Ruhr has existed as an unconventional model asserting continuity and autonomy, initially performing in the city hall until the troupe finally found its beautiful residence at the Raffelberg in the former bathhouse. A theater that is not primarily literary but equally embraces other forms of expression and asserts the ensemble at its center. The traveling circus of the Theater an der Ruhr with a fixed address is a successful model. Not only in North Rhine-Westphalia, which awarded Ciulli its state prize in 2013. Just as Pina Bausch did before, who also remained in Wuppertal and felt at home all over the world.
Ciulli and his team have succeeded in combining intellectuality, theater theory, and political enlightenment from the spirit of '68 with popular appeal and elemental imagery. To be both magicians and disenchanters, visionaries and pessimists. One of his masters was fellow countryman Giorgio Strehler. Before the term became a guiding principle and a concrete practice, the Theater an der Ruhr understood itself as multicultural. A liaison was formed with the Sinti theater Pralipe, collaborated with the Turkish National Theater Ankara, invited the world to the Ruhr, and went on tours. Ciulli had a close relationship with the Yugoslav exceptional actress Gordana Kosanovic, who passed away early in 1986. Ciulli and Company were explorers of closed theatrical continents. They performed in Belgrade, in Iran, crossed the Silk Road to Central Asia, and toured South America. More than 40 countries are on the list.
It is impossible to list all of Ciulli's productions that arose in dialogue with the ensemble and carry a processual character: magnificent works like "The Cyclops," "Alcestis," and "Electra" based on Euripides; performances of Shakespeare, Goldoni, Pirandello, Lorca, Chekhov, Büchner, Brecht, and Beckett, Gorky, Sartre, and Peter Weiss. The Theater an der Ruhr is – first and last – the artistic signature of Roberto Ciulli. He has his style, his method, even mannerisms, and anarchic impulses. But he always breaks out again: suddenly he brought a Feydeau, different from what one knows – instead of speed, slowing down; instead of doors slamming, the melancholy of stagnation. Suddenly, one is surprised by the spontaneous, the open, the vulnerable, the risky – and he himself, increasingly often as an actor in his own ring, enjoys being a clown.
