WRITER - "SOMETHING TRUE ABOUT TRU"

GIORGIO QUINTINI'S TRUMAN CAPOTE MONOLOGUE (2006)

Giorgio Quintini, like Truman Capote, wrote best when he took real characters and used them to write a monologue in which he obeyed Tennyson's advice to "look in your heart and write". They were not sterile reconstructions for he chose those characters which most closely resembled certain aspects of his own personality and life. Capote himself wrote his best work, In Cold Blood, using real people and their stories. In this Giorgio was a similar kind of writer. Even as a historian he had to be closely involved with his characters and he was not always averse to manipulating them for his own ends.

A young Truman Capote, cut from a magazine and attached to Giorgio's manuscript.

Giorgio's interesting introduction to the monologue explains how his friend, the actor Carlo Reali, for whom he had written Il Gestore, his Proust monologue, had asked him to translate into Italian a long play about Truman Capote by the NY playwright Jay Presson-Allen, Tru (1989).  It was considered too long for Reali to do, and according to Wikipedia, its reviews were not all good.  Giorgio decided to build on the USA text, cutting and amplifying as he saw fit, in order to create his own Truman Capote. On the two occasions it appears to have been performed, he read the part of Capote himself, looking back on his life, as Colette had done in the monologue he dedicated to her. Here is his short introduction (there exists a much longer one).

The first public performance was in June 2006 at Villa Elvira, near Ovada, which Giorgio enjoyed visiting, and where he also showed some of his own art. It was reported in the local newspaper.

Later on in the same year there was another performance in the town of Ovada itself at one of the Due Sotto l'Ombrello cultural association meetings. On 17th November 2006 Giorgio Quintini again performed his Truman Capote monologue. We know of no other performances.

Whereas the earlier monologues, written in Rome, exist in Giorgio's personally typed scripts with corrections, later works such as this do not seem to have been typed and exist only in his fair copy manuscript. This is composed of 14 sheets of his usual A4 white paper, written verso and recto in blue felt tipped pen. The first and last pages are reproduced below.

 The opening page

The close of the monologue,  firstly to the words of Edith Piaf, but then to Giorgio's "mah!!"