By the time the sun strikes the rooftops, the sound of traffic is growing in the streets. Vendors have already left their homes for their nooks in the Centro Storico. They carry with them wooden vessels inlaid with bone and pearl, demonstrating the skill of intarsia (certosina), fine metalwork goods recalling the silversmiths of the Borgo Orefici, carefully carved figures and landscapes of clay for the nativities (presepio), and delicate lace. Their studios are tucked away in alleyways, lofts, and courtyards, akin to plants nestled in volcanic crevices. Nearby, the popular tourist thoroughfares of Via dei Tribunali and Via S. Gregorio Armeno are already being blocked by throngs of people. Shops filled with familiar, mass-produced horns (cornicelli, always bright red, resembling chillies) of various sizes, Pulcinellan masks (cast facsimiles lacking the tactility and malleability of the leather originals) and bags of taralli open onto crowded streets. Naples accepts this co-existence of craft and callous commercialisation. The city, which welcomes 64,000 cruise ships and nearly as many tourists as residents each year, seems to have found a rhythm by which guests andresidents co-exist: through the day, the streets are filled with tourists, by night they are reclaimed for local revellers.
But tourist numbers continue to increase, and pressures on housing and social space grow. Title explores a formalisation of the unspoken truce between visitors and residents. It proposes a series of spaces of public performance, clustered around Vico Cinquesanti, the cloister and church of San Paolo Maggiore (constructed over the ruins of 1st-Century temple of Castor and Pollux), and an ancient Roman Theatre caught within a residential block. These spaces respond to the intermittent presence of different users. The block separating the cloister and the street is opened up to both sides to form a dance studio, rehearsal spaces, and stage which can be viewed from an amphitheatre set within the site of a small car park and from the cloister. With the passage of the day, different groups pass through this open theatre. The cloister is transformed into a marketplace serving locals and tourists, and then cleared and closed to form an extended space for rehearsal, performance and local commercial meetings. The sounds of the market, in which the lace and fabrics that were so vital to Neapolitan trade are sold, and where craftsmen meticulously apply wax to the seams of umbrella handles, mingle with the dancers' footsteps, the overflow of music from windows and the calls of vendors and Vespas. As Benjamin and Lācis proposed, the city once again becomes a “theatre of…unforeseen constellations” in which buildings are “popular stages” and spaces both “stage and boxes.” Before long, the sound of rain permeates the courtyard, people gather under the colonnades and elders on balconies retract swaying wooden baskets. Umbrellas blossom in the rain-soaked streets as the vendors pack up their wares and the dancers descend.
