THE THEATRE OF FESTIVALS
BETWEEN LOCAL AND GLOBAL
PRIN 2022
Despite the most recent international developments in the field of "Festival Theatre Studies," Italian scientific research has not yet dedicated systematic analysis to this subject of study and its history.
The project aims to fill this gap and study festivals as fundamental moments of Italian theatrical and cultural life in the second half of the twentieth century, in the years from the reconstruction to the political protest movements.
Specifically, the project examines the impact of theatrical festivals on a) innovation and internationalization of performative languages, and b) the transformations of local communities that hosted them.
The specific objects of study are three events:
"Festival Internazionale del Teatro Universitario" in Parma,
"Festival dei Due Mondi" in Spoleto, and
"Festival Internazionale del Teatro in Piazza" in Santarcangelo di Romagna.
From this specific field, the project addresses the following research questions.
1. It reconstructs, through an experimental historiographical approach, the contribution of Italian festivals to theatre innovation in the period under review, analysing the dialectic they generate between the local and international dimensions.
2. It lays the methodological foundations for a history of theatrical festivals intended as "intangible cultural heritage" of the communities that produced and hosted them, involving in the processes of knowledge and memorization the territories, local authorities, and theatrical institutions.
3. It promotes a method of collecting, computerized description, and networking of innovative sources, capable of: a) enhancing existing archives/funds (also through their interrelation); b) experimenting with the reactivation of documentary heritage through the tools of oral history.
RESEARCH GROUP
P.I.: Donatella Orecchia
Associated Investigator: Roberta Gandolfi
ROMA TOR VERGATA Unit: Tancredi Gusman
PARMA Unit: Francesca Bortoletti
Header Image : poster for the 1980 edition of the Festival del Teatro in Piazza di Santarcangelo di Romagna
1 : poster for the 10th edition of the Festival dei Due Mondi, Spoleto, 30 June-16 July 1967
2 : poster for the 10th edition of the Festival Internazionale del Teatro Universitario, University of Parma, 7-14 April 1962
