“This show is going to be very real. Perhaps more than the others” Interview with Giada Biaggi, an all-rounder comedian author soon in the theater with a new show

Who doesn't know Giada Biaggi? An all-rounder comic author, writer and comedian, she writes novels, shows, monologues, comedic pieces and - very recently - even songs. Stable presence on our Instagram profiles, seeing his growth was a spectacle in itself. But speaking of entertainment. His, the last one, arrives at the Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan from 14 to 17 July and is entitled Summer on a Solitary Bitch. More than a show, a stand-up comedy happening that transforms contemporary summer into a hilarious catalog of collective anxieties, unrealized desires and small emotional disasters. We had a chat with her on the occasion of this, in fact, happening.

Interview with Giada Biaggi, soon at the Teatro Franco Parenti with her new show

When we ask her to define herself, Giada Biaggi goes out of the box, defining herself as an author in general: “I am interested in an idea of authorship that is a bit Anglo-Saxon, in which the voice comes before the genre. You can be on stage, write a book, make a joke, shoot a movie, and everything belongs to the same imagination.”

You called 'Summer on a Solitary Bitch' a 'must see' show. What's the most important thing you lost in the summer?

At twenty, a flight to New York. And I couldn't afford another one. Missing a flight to New York in summer meant losing much more than a plane. Perhaps it was my first real adult moment: discovering that some mistakes are not followed by a revelation. Only a closed gate follows.

Which celebrity would be the perfect star of Summer on a Solitary Bitch?

A middle ground between Lena Dunham, Chloë Sevigny and Lily Allen. Lena Dunham for narrative neurosis, Chloë Sevigny for inaccessible coolness, Lily Allen for that wonderful thing about being able to seem pop while she's telling you about an emotional disaster.

What is the summer behavior that immediately makes you think: “humanity will not make it”?

The crosses and the anklets. The cruises because David Foster Wallace in A Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again had it all figured out: hell is not pain, it's fun organized with the buffet. And the anklets because every summer this idea returns that a woman, as soon as she exceeds 28 degrees, should decorate her ankle as if it were a Formentera tent. The anklet worries me: it is the exact point where female freedom meets the tourist village. When I see a cruise ship and an anklet in the same field of vision I think: humanity will not make it.

Is the figure of the 'solitary bitch' a claim, an existential condition or a consequence of the algorithm?

It is above all an existential condition. And also a somewhat blasphemous tribute to Battiato: Summer on a Solitary Bitch was born from Summer on a Solitary Beach, only instead of the metaphysical beach there is a single woman at the theater in July, who is already Schopenhauer with air conditioning. I am interested in the idea of doing a summer show in a place that seems almost unnatural in summer: the theater. The solitary bitch is not free because she drinks a cocktail in front of the sea. She is free because, at a certain point, she no longer wants to pretend to be less alone, less intelligent or less difficult to love.

What's the worst piece of advice being given to single women?

The worst advice is: 'Forget it. Men are all jerks.” It's advice that seems feminist, but it's not. I understand where it comes from, obviously: sometimes I too have thought of it with an almost liturgical conviction. But at some point it becomes a prison. It prevents you from distinguishing, listening, seeing that not all men are bad: some are just clumsy, scared, emotionally unavailable for x reasons. In this show I would like to try to do something almost revolutionary for me: to speak well of men. Get out of my hysterical rhetoric, from the temptation to transform every man into a defendant and every report into a trial file. I think there are a lot of sensitive men who, in their wrong ways, are really trying to understand us and do their best. Then of course, often their best comes late, is misspelled, contains the word 'boh' and has criminal emotional punctuation. But it's not always malice. Sometimes it's just sentimental illiteracy with good intentions.

Is there anything that you considered a sentimental failure in your twenties and that today you consider a victory?

Yes: don't be chosen. At twenty, it seemed to me the most definitive form of sentimental failure. If someone didn't want me, I thought that was a diagnosis about me: about my body, about my intelligence, about my ability to be loved. It seemed to me that love was a kind of permanent test and that every refusal confirmed that I had not passed the selection. Today I think that not being chosen, at times, has been a very unromantic form of salvation. Not because rejection hurts less - it hurts so badly - but because I realized that being chosen by the wrong person can be much more dangerous than not being chosen at all.

How much autobiographical is there in your shows and how much is a theatrically improved version of your traumas?

This show is going to be very real. Perhaps truer than the others. Usually in my shows I start from something autobiographical and then I deform it, carry it to the caricature, make it more hysterical, more grotesque, more theatrical. It's a way to protect myself, but also to transform pain into a recognizable comic form. In Summer on a Solitary Bitch, on the other hand, I feel the need to take a different step: to be less caricatural, less defensive, less interested in looking brilliant at all costs. It doesn't mean it will be a serious show, but it will be closer to the emotional truth of things.

Have you ever written a joke thinking it was exaggerated and then seeing reality overcome it in a matter of a week?

Yes. I had written a monologue about men obsessed with Japan, thinking: "Maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe this thing is too specific, too caricatural.” Then I actually went out with someone who talked to me about Pokémon and One Piece pretty much the whole time. And the tragic thing is that before I wrote that joke it had never happened to me.

What's in your future?

I'm finishing my next novel, which will be a memoir. I'm shooting a movie and I wrote one, a rom-com, because apparently I still have faith in love, at least when I can control the script. Very recently - two weeks ago - I also started writing songs in English. Maybe one will end up in the show. Besides, I really want to fall in love and get married in Scotland. I say this without irony, so I hope the effort will be appreciated.