A gomicciolo, in Tuscan dialect, is a ball of wool.  But it is also a ‘knot’ of emotion which stays in your stomach, and which you can’t get rid of.  In this case, a knot of memory which won’t go away.  It is a concept which was referred to several times in autodrammi after 2005.

The stage was divided in two by a veil: in front of it, the people and their discussions belonged to present-day Monticchiello; behind it there appeared scenes from the past as shown in previous autodrammi.  In the present day, there were discussions and disagreements between the older and younger generations, with the young people showing increasingly less understanding of the memories and traditions which have been expressed by the Teatro Povero.  From behind the veil, the famiglia contadina (peasant family) continued to insist on its presence.

A pot of basil was carried from the past world into the present: it was immediately seized on to act as a facile superficial symbol for a television programme which would exploit and commercialize the old world and the old values.  A competition would be mounted, on the theme ‘Is it necessary to know one’s past, in order to build one’s future?  But an elderly representative of the past, and of the Teatro Povero, made the basil pot disappear with a conjuring trick.  Monticchiello was still expressing resistance to an overdose of modernity.