KEEP CALM AND POTA

KEEP CALM AND POTA

Apr 13, 2024 | ART, ART, CULTURE, CULTURE, WOMEN, WOMEN

Keep calm and pota!

Don’t say you’re not already smiling thinking to Keep calm and pota.

I immediately lit up, also because Keep calm and pota is curated by Piöcc’s Café.

Café! A coincidence, or rather, I would directly say a sign.

A sign that I immediately grasped when I contacted the Teatro Centro Lucia in Botticino Sera.

Yes, you read that right: theatre.

Elena kindly explained that their artistic direction in recent seasons has been proposing a review of dialectal comedies from the Brescia area entitled ‘Èl bel del dialet a teàter’.

As I have already mentioned, I am very fond of dialect. 

Keep calm and pota is therefore a dialect comedy, and Cafè di Piöcc a theatre company.

Elena also helped me contact the director: Manuela.

In two words: a revelation!

Quoting Queen Agatha:
A clue is a clue, two clues are a coincidence, but three clues make a proof.

Keep Calm, Coffee and Friendship. 

The founders of the Café di Piöcc are three friends who meet in the parvis of the cathedral church in Montichiari.

Money is tight and friends watch the gentlemen eat pastries and drink wine, but they can only afford water from the fountain: the Café di Piöcc then, that is, the poor man’s café.

At Cafè di Piöcc, stories, gossip and historical facts are told.

From these tales, one of the first theatre companies in Brescia was born in 1970, a troupe that was also the subject of a university thesis.

Manuela joined the company, gradually performing various tasks: props girl, prompter, actress with a small part, assistant director.

Until one evening in the rehearsal room she picked up a book from which an envelope came out with a letter that no one had ever seen.

Destiny, magic, what would you call it?

In this letter, Beppe Boschetti, one of the three founding friends, had expressed his wish to leave the company in Manuela’s hands.

A story made up of people, a long journey made up of extremely remarkable theatre works such as I tre innocenti (The Three Innocents), inspired by news events, or Semplicemente donna (Simply Woman): a red chair and 49 changes of clothes representing the stages of life up to menopause.

And yet settings and periods vary while the common denominator remains the titles that are idioms, e.g. Petost che peji l’è mei insi or Ogné come la sàpes stada.

All the way to Keep Calm and pota.

Pota is the word that unites Brescia and Bergamo, an intercalary that, pronounced with the typical accent, is always very nice.

The author had the intuition to combine pota with the expression keep calm, linking up with Freud’s truth, the female Ego interjecting itself with the Super Ego, and communicating a message: love wins.

Speaking of messages, the Cafè di Piöcc also collaborates with the municipality of Montichiari for social work with the Legality in short project. 

It can therefore be said that Cafè di Piöcc keeps calm but is unstoppable!

Many many compliments and a special thanks to Manuela Danieli.

LET’S PRETEND THAT

LET’S PRETEND THAT

Aug 12, 2023 | ISN'T IT IRONIC?

Summer: time for travel, craving for levity.

I propose a surreal quiz to laugh with each other.  Are you ready to imagine?

Let’s pretend that …

you are traveling with people who make you feel good, whether family or friends.

First question: where are you going?

You are chatting about the last movie you saw while you are driving, but you feel a little tired. You see a motorway café, you stop and say: “I need a coffee, I’ll be right back.”

Twenty minutes later you aren’t back yet, so whoever was with you comes in looking for you and what do they see?

You singing standing on the counter like the girls from Coyote Ugly

but this is Italy, there are no microphones in the motorway cafés and you are holding a Rustic sandwich with ham, tomato, mozzarella salad and mayonnaise.

Second question: what are you singing?

Since you have been discovered, you invite them to join you.

Assumption 1:
They catch up with you and start singing with you in the Top Gun style.


Assumption 2:
someone decides to bite the Rustic sandwich 

Assumption 3:
they look at you dumbfounded and after the first moment when they are like salt statues they react by asking what the heck you are doing

Let’s pretend that …

you have to give an explanation: what happened after the coffee?

KCDC on VOYAGE MINNESOTA MAGAZINE!

KCDC on VOYAGE MINNESOTA MAGAZINE!

Jun 18, 2022 | ISN'T IT IRONIC?, JOURNEY FROM MUG TO MUG, WHO CARES

I sincerely thank all the staff of Voyage Minnesota Magazine and especially Camila, for contacting me and for the space they gave me!

I went browsing in Minnesota to discover Egg coffee and this virtual journey allowed me to discover interesting things I did not know, but at the same time someone else discovered me.

Unbelievable stuff, I know.

Yet here I am, with new friends and another story to tell.

The story of a project that I liked right away.

The story of a project whose thoughts are key words, which are also my own:

We also think that artists rock.

This is kind of the concept of Minnesota Voyage Magazine:
We love small business, mom-n-pop and holes in the walls. We’re not snobs, but we don’t love most chains. We think independent entrepreneurs, freelancers and other risk-takers make our cities exciting places to live. We cherish the rebellious spirit, we don’t think just a handful of big companies should control all of our commerce, and we think smore with vegan marshmallows are better than regular marshmallows. We respect people and organizations that take the road less traveled. We root for the underdog and almost never say no to pizza.

After all, how can one say no to pizza?

If you’d like, after pizza, you can find me by clicking on this coffee. 

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