The Project

Who are we?

We are a group of Theatre and Performance Studies scholars from the Universities of Rome Tor Vergata and Parma , responsible for the 2022 PRIN project (Research Projects of National Interest, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research), entitled Theatre Festivals between Local and Global. Rethinking Theatre and Performance in Italy from the 1950s to the 1970s

Research Field

The project focuses on three festivals of theatre and performing arts that emerged in Italy in the second half of the twentieth century and soon gained significant cultural relevance: the “Festival Internazionale del Teatro Universitario (International Festival of University Theatre)” in Parma (FITU); the “Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of Two Worlds)” in Spoleto (FSpoleto) and the “Festival Internazionale del Teatro in Piazza (International Street Theatre Festival)” in Santarcangelo (FSantarcangelo).

Time-framing

The project investigates each of the three festivals against the Italian social and cultural backdrop in the time-frame between the years of post-war reconstruction and the end of the movements of protest in the Seventies. Within the broad history of the three festivals (FITU: 1953-1975, FSpoleto: 1958-present, FSantarcangelo: 1971-present) special attention is given to two phases: a. The Outset; b. The Long Protest, and for each of them some specific case studies are identified

Project’s scientific Goals

O1: Evaluate the specific contribution of theatre festivals to the processes of innovation and restructuring of the Italian theatre scene, from post-war reconstruction to the age of protest movements, against the backdrop of the local-international dialectic (from the organizational, productive, cultural, artistic, and social viewpoints).

O2: Investigate the relationship between the three festivals and the local context in which they operate as well as the envisaged and implemented community project in relation to the (artistic, political, social) transformations taking place in the period under consideration.

O3: Preserving the material and immaterial cultural heritage of the three festivals: from documents scattered in more than one archive (event collections, public administration records and private archives), to new sources, such as the oral sources, which play a key role for the conservation of otherwise dispersed memory

O4: Test an original and innovative research method in the field of national and international theatre studies: a) that connects different archives to each other, b) that creates a synergy between archive sources and oral memory sources.

Research Group

• P.I.: Donatella Orecchia (Università Roma Tor Vergata)
• Associated Investigator: Roberta Gandolfi (Università Parma)
• UNIVERSITÀ di ROMA TOR VERGATA: Tancredi Gusman, Armando Petrini, Roberta Ferraresi, Eleonora Luciani, Rodolfo Sacchettini, Arianna Morganti
• UNIVERSITÀ di PARMA: Francesca Bortoletti, Giulia Govi Cavani, Tommaso Zaccheo