L’avvento del teatro latinoamericano in Italia negli anni Settanta; Un modello etico e poetico per un teatro radicato sul territorio

Abstract

In 1977 two important theater encounters took place in Italy: the first was the National Convention of Teatri di Base (Casciana Terme, 18-22 March), the second one the International Atelier of the Teatro di Gruppo (Bergamo, 28 August-6 September). These events, attended by hundreds of theater groups including the Teatro Nucleo (Argentina/Italy) and Cuatrotablas (Peru), enabled Italian and Latin American performers to share working methods, to imagine new forms of management and to create an international network of independent groups that claim their marginality as an instrument of affirmation of their ethics and poetics. The energy and creativity of Latin American artistswho used the theater as an instrument of resistance in the hard social and political contexts where they operated leave an indelible mark on Italian colleagues, both from an artistic and a human point of view. In this article we will try to retrace the main stages of these two meetings and reflect on the way in which the Latin American theater of the seventies influenced (and still influences) Italian theater.