On the stage of the theater “La cittadella degli artists” in Molfetta, in the province of Bari, a band provides the backdrop for a scene clearly inspired by the monologue. Twentieth century written by Alessandro Baricco. In fact, the atmospheres and dialogues are more reminiscent of Giuseppe Tornatore’s film The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean taken from the author’s work. But ultimately the story is a pretext, because none of the actors playing the characters do it for a living.
They do something completely different in life. They are programmers, project managers, IT systems engineers, software engineers. Generally, they only have participation in Fincons Group, an integrated and family company that dates back to 1983 and which today, with a turnover of almost 220 million euros and more than 2,700 employees, has 21 offices in Italy, Europe and the USA. Among them, the Delivery Center in Bari, inaugurated in 2022, represents the Group’s center of excellence where almost a thousand people work. Ten of them in the afternoon, at the end of October 2023, play the role of Danny Boodmann TD Lemon Novecento, trumpeter Tim Tooney or play jazz music of the Thirties style. They chose to do so voluntarily, marrying a proposal that originated Anna Maria Delzottihis wife Michele MorettiCEO and founder of Fincons.
Vimercate and Bari, the two theater workshops of the Fincons Group
“This time I was really calm,” Delzotti explains on the sidelines of the show. For 12 years she has been running the theater workshop for the employees of the Vimercate office and for some years for those in Bari. In the north she is helped Andrea Cavaraon the south by Marco Grossi, both professional actors with whom to support those who do not usually take the stage. The members of this strange “group” are not always able to complete their commitment due to family reasons or because they have simply gone to work elsewhere in the meantime. Which does not exclude those who intend to stay to do so until the end, as the workshop manager confirms: “Some stayed even if they changed companies. The first time, 22 responded to my proposal. But those who thought they were just coming to distract them soon left. In the beginning I didn’t have in mind the final performance, but the road we had to travel together. A path similar to the one I had taken at school as a teacher: text selection, in-depth reading and understanding, production of new text.’
Who is who
Anna Maria Delzotti
Cultural manager and theater director, Fincons Group
Today there are an average of about ten participants in both workshops respectively. What prompts them to spend unpaid energy and time is above all curiosity, the birth of new relationships and “the movement that is created, a kind of wave that magically pulls one from the other and which, if you have patience, continues gradually. to carry out his task, always to convince someone” says Delzotti again.
The ensemble of the show staged in Molfetta is an example. Alessandro Assab, Fincons’ project manager and performer of the project, had asked if there were any musicians in the company. The answer was Fincons Blu Ghesa spontaneously born musical group that joined the theater group FinconsTekne of the capital of Apulia.
An approach to sustainability that comes from afar
“After work” has different rhythms. The one in Vimercate involves weekly sessions that intensify as the debut approaches, the one in Bari is concentrated in monthly appointments in which the moderator moves from north to south to closely monitor the preparation of the show.
For the reasons that motivate Fincons on the one hand and those who work with the company on the other hand to participate in the initiative, Michele Moretti he has no doubts: “In our company we have noticed this there is a need for something more from the point of view of humanity or what is called sustainability today. From the beginning we wanted people to be happy working with us. We are now in our 40s, a time when our lives have changed and our world has changed. In the past there were tycoons, company owners who encouraged the personal development of their employees. Today we tend to see only the business, the result is that there is less and less space to devote to the human factor. When we built this new building in Bari – Moretti continues – we told our partners that this would be their new home, with spaces reserved for leisure as well. Here I often find the ‘boys’ playing table tennis or chess at six o’clock in the evening, in addition to their normal working hours.”
Who is who
Michele Moretti
CEO and Founder, Fincons Group
An education of the individual that helps to discover oneself
The choice of the theater as a moment of gathering adds an extra element to this idea of corporate well-being. That of art as a teacher of life. So much so that if the aim was only to support the desire of the spectators, it would be enough to give them tickets as gifts.
Instead, the purpose has deeper roots. Without disturbing the experiments of the factory theater of Dario Fo, who in 1970 aimed at improvisation in everyday spaces as a lever for creating critical consciousness, the theater at Finkons aims to “education of the individual – underlines Anna Maria Delzotti – which does not end with the years of study and within the classrooms. The Latin word educate it means drawing their potential from others. This can be done with a 3-year-old child and with a 40- or 70-year-old man and woman.”
How can this happen, in a seemingly distant context, such as an organization specialized in the development of technologies for the digitization of processes, is Delzotti herself who clarifies: “During the workshop a parallel world is created in which to enter one must to give up everyday life. setting aside the patterns that hold people back from manifesting. The experience of living with others, typical of the theater, makes us understand that we must use different times compared to the hurried ones we are used to. In this exercise we return to the secret rooms of the “I” to recover the knowledge of ourselves. In fact, only with proper self-awareness can one properly approach others. It’s as if we had to take back an ancestral base that, unfortunately, we forget while living.” And that goes for everyone, regardless of whether they work in the tech world or in a completely different field.