Carla Anita Mattiazzo has been touring her hugely successful cabaret productions since 2010. Under the banner of Carla’s Confessional Cabaret, Carla has poured her own life experiences into her show, picking up awards and many five-star reviews along the way.
At this year’s Fringe, Carla is performing her new show That’s NOT Amore at six venues around Adelaide.
Carla spoke to Glam Adelaide’s Arts Editor, Ben Stefanoff, about That’s NOT Amore. We were interested to learn where she draws her inspiration for her shows from as well as where her love of performing stemmed from.
“I was told that I sang before I spoke. I used to make my family sit down and watch me do performances in the backyard and the lounge room. My dad used to own Angus and Robertson bookstores, and they used to have a speaker and a mic to do spruiking out the front. So I used to use that in the backyard and do a performance for all the pets that I had.”
Over the years Carla has written and produced a wonderful collection of cabaret shows. We asked Carla where she draws her ideas from when creating a new show.
“It’s my life. I seem to have had a very ‘interesting’ life filled with a lot of adventure, a lot of trauma and a lot of challenges that have made me very resilient – with a lot of unique experiences along the way! For example, the show that I did last year and the year before. Period: Four Seasons, One Cycle was about the cycle of period poverty. I used to be a teacher and one of the reasons why I put that show together was because in every contract that I had there was always a handful of students that were experiencing period poverty and even now sex education in schools is still very far away from what it needs to be. I’m really passionate about young people and their development, and I wish I had the information as a young person with periods to allow me to look after myself better. So life seems to hand me my shows because my branding is my life on stage. It’s confessional. It’s me bearing my soul to an audience.”
Carla’s new show, That’s NOT Amore, is a sentimental, nostalgic performance that wraps the audience up in amore throughout.
“So through each show that I’ve written, I always have a specific theme. For this show, it’s about what is love and what isn’t love and what we accept socially under the patriarchal lens and or under the family structure and/or under traditional cultural expectations. I share stories about my life, my immigrant family, and the present day, of the things that really we shouldn’t be accepting just because it’s the way it’s been done or because there’s pressure to be one way or the other. I go into the complex generational things that get passed down. Every story has a song with it to emphasise or draw the audience into the emotion of the show. The tagline I like to use is ‘By Italians, For Italians and anyone who loves a plate of pasta’. So that’s basically saying it’s for everybody, because it holds up a mirror to society on what we need to look at. There’s a scene and it’s actually the first scene that was the catalyst to create the show. It is about violence in relationships, family, domestic violence, the statistics, the sexual assault, and so on. It holds a mirror up to society, but it also celebrates the human experience through my Italian cultural lens. So there are very specific cultural things in there, but it is very much a human story.
“At my Saturday night shows, audiences can bring in essential items to be passed on to Catherine House as well. I love doing things like this. I did that with Period last year – It brings me a lot of joy being able to bring a charity alongside to use the skills that I have, which is entertaining people, but also bringing awareness and giving back.”
That’s NOT Amore will be performed at multiple venues throughout the Fringe. For venue details and to book, visit: https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/that-s-not-amore-af2024
Photo credit: supplied
More News
