The theatre of and for the nuns (Naples, 18th century)

Recent studies have focused on the musical environment and the theatre in female monasteries of many Italian cities between the 16th and 18th centuries. These art forms became famous as forms of entertainment in travel literature and in the chronicles of the time but were forbidden in the age of the Counter-Reformation. However, the theatrical performances, both in prose and in music, enjoyed enormous success and spread in male and female monasteries. As of the 17th century, if not even earlier, travellers from half of Europe arrived in Naples, attracted by the excellence of the musical and theatrical performances that they could enjoy in the monasteries of the city. This essay aims to reconstruct the times, the modalities, and the contents of the theatrical offerings in the female monasteries of Naples at the beginning of the 18th century, all of which are still unknown today. In particular, the case of the Franciscan monastery of St Chiara will be examined. Through the patronage of Queen Maria Amalia, musical and theatrical performances played an active leading role in the configuration of a specific theatrical type and taste and increased the education of the nuns and young women who were educated in the monastery, representing and legitimising new feelings and sensibilities. The religious women found a way to talk of their feelings and concerns together; they forged relationships even with the environments outside of the monastery and especially with the Queen’s court and with the courts of the aristocratic palaces of their families of origin.

After the 1800’s, “Century Of Actresses”, a few core points on Italian actresses in the 1900’s

Critical studies on the theatre from the 19th and 20th centuries, even founding ones, are limited as they do not include a gender category - a paradox in a space where bodies are central. The actresses, in fact, give life to different stories, which allow for the enrichment of historical-critical reconstructions. Given the vastness of the topic, this article aims to identify some fundamental turning points. We begin with the legacy of the 19th century, rich from both a linguistic and a historical-critical viewpoint; the article moves on to the post-Duse period, which saw, on the one hand, the birth of the actor-artist’s Italian specificity and, on the other, the crisis of female leaders of theatre companies; then, the article discusses the birth of Italian theatre direction in the period following the Second World War and the reaction of a few actresses, like Anna Magnani, who aimed to re-create the reality that was to be reclaimed by the history of theatre. Finally, the article explores the breakdown caused by the New Theatre and even calls into discussion the word for “actress”, with overlaps in the fields of theatre direction and dramaturgy.

Thinking back to Cani di bancata by Emma Dante. Mammasantissima’s androgynous costumes

The essay reflects on Emma Dante, the unusual and versatile artist (theatre manager, actress-author, film and opera director). Emma Dante’s story condenses different and apparently conflicting experiences and knowledge (the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome, the teachings of Vacis in Turin, the laboratories with Cesare Ronconi) before the foundation of the Sud Costa Occidentale group in Palermo, in 1999, with its subsequent transformations continuing until today. The result is an irregular figure of a “matriarch”, in the fruitful vein of new Sicilian dramaturgy, which takes nourishment from the land of origin but with which she feeds a collective and authorial theatre. This theatre is both dramatic (indeed tragi-comic) and post-dramatic, with European depth, and it is not spared of controversy and criticism, as it is awkward and uncomfortable. The analysis of her performance in Cani di bancata (2006) aims to highlight themes and styles connected to a feminism that goes beyond gender in the strict sense but that is able to become a metaphor of a world and a human diversity that involves and disturbs us through an irreverent gaze.