I first met Carlo Scandiuzzi, who died on Feb. 10 at 70, in the wild and woolly year of 1978. He was volunteering at the Empty Space Theatre, collecting props for a play of mine. He had studied acting in Switzerland, and as we young guys began to chat during a rehearsal break, he leapt into an excited discussion of the play’s rural characters, some of whom were none too swift, with the word “consanguinity.” That word sounded so utterly apt in his Italian accent, resonating in his bass-baritone voice with all the authority of its Latin origin, that we both started laughing. Needless to say, I liked him instantly.
Later, I had the chance to perform with him in a play in which his character murdered mine. We laughed about that too — sometimes while murdering a pitcher of beer in the Comet Tavern.
What I discovered then about Carlo was proven again and again as the years passed. He had a professional knowledge of the theatre, which he matched with a genuine thrill for the communal heave-ho of making art, no matter what the form. He found theatre and dance and film and site-specific work all compelling. And while a very free spirit, he was hip to the pragmatic fact that institutions, large and small, were a necessary part of the cultural landscape, and needed care and feeding. Equally, he had a straightforward love for artists themselves.
Ah, youth! Shortly after he worked on my play, Carlo danced into an adventurous career in producing. Early on, he brought rock bands like Devo and notables such as James Brown to the Showbox. Some groups in those days were fronted by money of unclear origin, and his story about counting the box office take (and then watching a representative count it again to be sure Carlo and his partner Terry had got it right) reflected his entrepreneurial, if then somewhat naive, courage.
Later, a bit more safely, he produced films in L.A, an activity, however, which some people think might be slightly more crazy. Fortunately for us all up here in the wet, he and Eulalie, his wonderful partner and wife, returned to Seattle, and gave themselves energetically to a dizzying number of cultural institutions (among them ACT Theatre, The Seattle Rep, Indieflix, Moonjar, The Seattle Public Library, and Cornish College of the Arts), lately through his arts-consultancy firm, Scandiuzzi Krebs.
About his work with ACT, I must say a little more. ACT got very lucky when he became
managing director. In 1996, the theatre had moved from its old home in Lower Queen Anne to its current spot at 7th and Union, and the transition to a much larger facility had been rocky. By the end of 2002 it had gone through two artistic directors and found itself shuttered. It succeeded in rebooting itself in 2003, but its internal weather, particularly on the management side, remained turbulent especially when it came to finding a new managing director who could fit with a talented but traumatized staff.
But when Carlo came on, a palpable lightening could be felt in its warren of spaces. Among all his qualities, I think it was his generosity of spirit, his recognition of how much expertise there was in the staff, both on the artistic and management side of things, that gave the place a new confidence in how much more it could do in that wonderful building. He especially delighted in the creation of new work, and through the theater’s Central Heating Lab, where he really stoked the furnace.
All of us have dark times and failures, and Carlo had his share of them. But they never severed him from his commitment to helping others. He was a man who liked people, most people anyway, a true philanthropist if you remember the word’s first and oldest meaning: one who loves mankind.
He was a most unusual mix: a bon vivant without vulgarity, a charmer without deception, a believer in honest work and the dignity of labor, in good wine and social justice and art, free in heart and mind. He was profoundly European, as only a tri-lingual Swiss Italian could be. And yet he was a lover of our free-wheeling American experience—excepting, perhaps, our current political malaise.
Out of many memories, one is particularly vivid. Lucia Neare, that maker of undefinably magical theatrical events, brought her remarkable horses to the theatre one afternoon. (Beautifully sculpted horses in which there were actors, by the way, not horses!) They were going to entertain our gala party that year, and she wanted us to know them.
I watched Carlo as he met them in the lobby of the theatre. They bowed to him, and he bowed back, smiling from ear to ear — immediately joining their world, as easily and deferentially as a great aristocratic 16th-century courtier, for whom there could be no greater honor than the privilege of escorting their astounding selves into our imaginations.
Kurt Beattie, the former artistic director of ACT, worked with Carlo Scandiuzzi at ACT and on many other artistic adventures.
Thank you. I now mourn the loss of a person who I’ve never met.
Beautiful!
I can see him loving greeting those “horses”.
You two were a wonder partnership for Seattle.