The village of Cinquina has no library and has rejected plans for a new theatre.

Were we in Japan, we would be talking about Noh theatre. Instead, we are in Cinquina, a sleepy suburb just outside the Grande Raccordo Anulare ring road. The single syllable, however – in this case signifying total rejection – remains the same. Residents—or at least a committee speaking on their behalf—are opposed to a laminated timber theatre with a capacity of nearly four thousand seats that the local council plans to build in the area. I learned this over the phone at the only spot with reception in my mother’s house. Cinquina is the neighbourhood where I grew up. Some twenty years ago, my mother joined a large group of residents in opposing a mast that might have simplified mobile phone calls. At the time, the residents prevailed, but the protest flared up again this summer over a new mast featuring the controversial 5G technology. Health concerns and falling property values—arguments already heard from my mother and on Raitre. This outcry is now joined by the Gran Teatro’s refusal. It remains unclear who proposed locating such a structure in a neighbourhood lacking bookshops, libraries, swimming pools, not even a football pitch or a pub. ‘New frontiers of NIMBYism,’ you might say, but Giordana Petrella, chair of the Transparency Committee and a member of the opposition in the centre-left-led Third Municipality, doesn’t see it that way. Speaking on the phone, she becomes impassioned: ‘We’re not saying no to the theatre outright, but no to the theatre in that location. Let’s consider another site. I live in that area, and it’s set to be built thirty metres from a block of flats and three hundred metres from the Marcigliana nature reserve. Wild boars live there; foxes pass through. Cinquina has enough bars, pizzerias and supermarkets as it is. It’s one of the few remaining neighbourhoods in the Third Municipality that’s on a human scale and surrounded by nature, despite all the construction going on. Cinquina does not want to end up like Porta di Roma or Talenti. This is a high-impact project costing ten million euros, so the private developer will want one event a day to recoup their investment. Moreover, there are no roads or car parks.” The situation is clear, thank you. However, there is more to the story. “It is merely an election stunt, and they have kept it hidden from us for almost a year without sharing it with the residents. They think the citizens are fools.” And here’s the twist. “A multi-purpose venue is soon to be built, two hundred metres from where they plan to build the theatre, and it’s already set to include a theatre! On a smaller scale, of course.” Goodness me, so as well as the Gran Teatro, will the residents also have a Piccolo Teatro? The neighbourhood will become a new Athens.

We ask our neighbour – a sort of mayor without a sash for the neighbourhood – what he thinks of Cinquina’s new Bolshoi. “These days, people are cooped up at home with their air conditioning cranked up. In the chat groups, all I read is people getting on the young lot’s case because they hang about in the park late into the evening in summer, but I wonder, where are they supposed to go when there isn’t a single decent venue around?” It seems like an obvious answer—to the theatre, surely? “They say the problem is the traffic, but I doubt there’ll be any traffic jams at eight in the morning just to get to the theatre.”

To ensure a level playing field, let us hear from Luca Blasi, the Councillor for Culture of the 3rd Municipality, who defends this situationist stunt. “It’s the same old story: we are witnessing an inability and a lack of will to look beyond the existing city. Cinquina suffers from a complete lack of cultural provision, and this venue would have a beneficial impact on the decline in the number of local shops. It is not a gift to the private sector; it is a project financed that will revert to public ownership in nineteen years’ time, and the facility is designed for local schools and neighbourhood committees.” So a meeting point for the upcoming protests has already been found; until now, residents used to gather in church or at the senior citizens’ centre. “People complain about wild boars, but then when someone proposes an urban development project, they’re at war with them.” Let’s take these wild boars to the theatre. Here’s hoping the mobile signal works there, at least.