Mario has started his career at a very young age. Beside a graduation in Psychology, he has studied acting, directing, dramaturgy and music. Since some years now he works as a theatrical actor as well as a composer of stage and audiovisual music.
He has written and directed a piece entitled “The Prince and the Moon”, for which he also composed the music, and which was presented in 2019 at the Napoli Teatro Festival.
In 2020 he has been on tour with Bertolt Brecht’s “Mutter Courage” directed by P. Coletta.
His debut on the big screen came on 2021 with Sergio Rubini movie “I Fratelli De Filippo” (The De Filippo Brothers) in which he plays the part of Eduardo De Filippo.
A debut full of responsibility, given the importance of the character of whom the director wanted to tell about the years of adolescence and training.
Being basically a theater actor fully engaged in writing, musical composition and directing, when he got the call for the audition he didn’t expect it.
The director chose him for one very reason.
That’s because Mario is young, he has a theatrical training and he finds himself in the moment of his debut and maybe with artistic needs very close to those of Eduardo around the years told in the movie.
Mario studied the character going beyond the public image to capture the man and it seems that he succeeded very well. In the same way, we thought of going beyond the movie actor and getting to know the man Mario Autore.
IP – What words would you use in order to describe your Napoli? –
MA – I was born in the Napoli historical center, when tourism and gentrification were not begun yet. And I’ve always thought that Napoli is the most anarchic town in Italy, maybe in Europe. It is a city where everything is possible and where the high and the low lay on the same plane. It is a true melting pot, as only a metropolis could be. Anyway it is not a completely European city. Mediterranean culture is so deeply rooted that it is hard to find it a European city. It’s a big Arabic baazar or a medieval village within its walls or a illuministic city with theatres and royal palaces and also a port, a touristic place, an industrial spot. Everything is so mixed that identity is hard to define. The main point is that – starting from its two thousands years old heritage – Napoli is not a city but a world. With its language, its rules, its own specific culture and, overall its mood. Yeah. Napoli is sure a mood, a way of being and a way to look at the world. –
IP – Do you think that being born in Napoli has in some way influenced your artistic talent? –
MA -Sure, even if my studies were not in the path of the Neapolitan tradition, that one have hugely influenced me through the everyday life I have lived here. In Napoli – in the historical center, where I still live, above all – art, history and culture are all around you. It is hard to walk without looking at a Roman column inside a wall, without listening buskers singing or playing music or dancing. The social life is full of art, theatre, music. However this does not mean that it is easy to work in this field. Far from it. In Napoli art is so widespread that is sometimes hard to separate professionals from amateurs. But, what i sure can say, is that there is a cultural ferment that shakes everyone who grows up within the city doors. Choosing to follow an artistic path comes easier when people around you do that. You can feel less out of society, less fool. Napoli can be very mean in some ways but in some others it is a city of freedom and without judgment. –
IP – What’s your relationship with tradition? –
MA – Well, I love tradition, both in art and in culture, but I don’t think that traditions have to be kept always the same. We have to remember that what we call tradition is the result of the transformations that new habits, new powers, new technologies, et cetera, have on the past. Tradition is not the past. It is always the present. Tradition is how the past still influence the present. I love what, in tradition, is heritage. I love the knowledge inside a specific shape of habits or objects. We always miss the point of tradition when we fix ourselves on shapes, it’ s about the meaning, not the shape. Shape is only good for signifying something, it is not the core. –
IP – From a joking psychological point of view, how would you define the coexistence between you as a director, you as an actor as well as you as a composer? –
MA -Funny question because I’ve a degree in psychology! I could open my DSM do diagnose something to myself (a personality disorder, sure), but I really do prefer a psycho analitical point of view. In that sense I can answer with a Freudian joke saying that I’m not neither an actor or a director or a composer but only an Autore (author in Italian). Jokes aside, my personalities live together quite well because I only let one go out at time. They do not influence each other too much. (The waiter and rockstar personalities are still waiting for their time). –
IP – Surely you knew the character before playing him. After shooting the movie, has your way of seeing Eduardo De Filippo changed? If so in which way? –
MA -Yeah, I knew him very well on the artistic side, but I didn’t know him so well in his private and more human life. The most exciting side of this job has been to have the opportunity to play a real person. When you study a character you may invent very much about him, but when your character has been a real person, you have to be much more loyal to the truth. Human truth is what I love in my job. Now I see Eduardo as a man and not as a show business worker. I can see now very well how his entire life work is a consequence of his childhood, something he could not avoid. His art as therapy for his hidden wounds. –
IP – About your future. Do you imagine it as a theatrical performance, as a film, or as a digital movie? –
MA – I think it as film. I can’t say way, but maybe it seems to me the perfect way to represent a person’s life. I see theatre as a media that is specific for looking at and talking about society. Digital movies are instead something less human. Films keep together stories, humanity and a world in an organic way. Anyway, the best choice would be a serial novel. You finish an episode and you’re a bit satisfied and a bit unsatisied, you always want more, want to see how it will go on. –
Mario is currently planning a film that will be shot next Summer and in which he will play the role of a musician, a clarinet player.
