Seminar by Ferruccio Marotti
15 novembre 2023, ore 14:30, Aula A, Ex Vetrerie Sciarra, via dei Volsci 122
The author, who lived with Edward Gordon Craig in Vence for about two years, started off the second half of 20th century historical and critical reflection on Craig with an essay published in 1961. Marotti recalls the adventure of his studies about one of the founding fathers of the modern scene. At the time, the documents about Craig’s activity were scattered between
Paris’s National Library and Vienna’s because of a legal dispute between the two institutions. Only later, Craig himself and then his sons, Teddy Craig and David Lees, started to sell his personal documents, diaries and letters to American universities, and the Moscow Art Theatre allowed the publication of its archival materials. After that, also the letters of Isadora
Duncan to Craig and Harry Graf von Kessler’s diary were published. Nevertheless,
it was the work that the author conducted in Vence in the late 1950s, rearranging and reading Craig’s personal papers, to disclose the clairvoyant insight of this solitary artist who, in his intuitive imagination, found new ways to rethink the theatre as performing art in a perspective open to the future. And the consequences of this development are now visible in the performing arts and in the cinema of the digital world era. The author therefore
identifies in the theatrical work of Brook, Strehler,Zeffirelli, Ronconi, Grotowski and Barba the references to ideas and to Craigian visions.
Ferruccio Marotti is Professor Emeritus of the University of Rome "La Sapienza", where, since 1963, he has taught History of Theatre, Dramaturgy, Institutions of Regulation, Institutions of digital regulation, and has been Professor of Performing Arts from 1980 to 2010.
From 1972 to 1980 he was part of the National Councils of the CNR (National Research Council) and taught Dramaturgy and Methodology of Performance Criticism at the DAMS of the University of Bologna.
From 1981 to 2010 he founded and directed the Centro Teatro Ateneo of the University of Rome "La Sapienza" where he also directed from 1970 to 1981 the Institute of Theatre and Entertainment and from 1987 to 1994 the Department of Music and Entertainment.
His fundamental contributions to the refoundation of studies on the history of Italian theatre, on the theorists of the direction of the twentieth century, on Eastern theatres and on theatrical anthropology, with fundamental texts, including Edward Gordon Craig (1961), The scene of Adolphe Appia (1963), Artaud, homme théatre (1964 for the Third RAI Programme), Amleto o dell'oxymoron: studi e note sull'estetica della scena moderna (1966), Il volto dell'invisibile: studi e ricerche sui teatri orientali (1984) The Commedia dell'arte e la società barocca: la professione del teatro (1991)volumes that have been reissued several times and translated into different languages, which have changed the analysis and research methodologies of end-of-century historiography.
He edited Italian editions of the texts of Appia and Craig, and the critical edition of the treatise by Leone de' Sommi Quattro dialoghi in the field of stage performances, the only existing collection of scenarios of the professionals of the Commedia dell'arte, The theatre of the representative fables of Flaminio Scala, and of the treatises and writings of art comedians.
In addition to his historical and theoretical studies, he has also worked as a film maker, as an author of audiovisual research on theatrical anthropology, from Il Principe Costante, reconstruction (1967 n. ed. 2005) to Bahrata Natyam (1973), Trance e e dramma a Bali (1974), Storie dell'isola della luce (1980/82), Il Macbeth di Carmelo Bene (1983), Il Macbeth di Vittorio Gassman (1983), Il lavoro teatrale di Eduardo all'Università di Roma (1985), Perché andare a teatro (1984), Laboratorio audiovisivo sull'attore e il lavoro teatrale (1985), Arlecchino a casa del diavolo (1996), Ognuno a suo modo by Luigi Pirandello: lezioni di regìa di Anatolij Vassil'ev (1996), Eduardo a tu per tu (1999), Eduardo racconta Eduardo (2000), Eduardo: teatro e magìa (2000/2), until Gianmaria Volonté, an actor against (2005).
The approximately three thousand videos he made are now online on Europeana, the European Digital Library. Since 1966 he has directed the series Biblioteca Teatrale for Bulzoni, which has published about 200 volumes, and since 1971 the magazine Biblioteca Teatrale - quadrimestrale di studi e ricerche sull spettacolo. His understanding as a historian and researcher confirms the reasons why he considers Ferruccio Marotti one of the greatest exponents of the theatrical historiography of the twentieth century and this first twenty years of the 21st century.
The seminar can also be attended remotely on Meet:
meet.google.com/ftd-yajv-anf