The dressing room seems to be waiting for the man to enter and to know what is about to happen: the customary ritual of putting on makeup, repeating one of the monologues of the show, Richard III, whose ghosts seem to float in the room, as the voices of the other actors can be heard in the dressing room next door as they prepare for the performance. The man, who is the director the mise-en-scène and actor, retraces its genesis, all the way back to the evening before, the dress rehearsal. All of a sudden, he is brought back to the present by a voice: “Showtime!” The curtain goes up.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES
“What convinced me to make this documentary about the work of Alessandro Gassmann was primarily my amazement as a spectator every time I see how talented he is as a stage director. It struck me as both proper and useful to try to document the work of an important exponent of Italian theatre who, still today, is mainly considered an actor. I think that his real talent, in theatre, is as a director and artistic director, with all due respect for his talent onstage and the sensitivity of his interpretation.”