The sad passions and the (removed) legacy of educational theatre

Abstract

The essay examines the phenomenon of educational theatre in the Sixties, focalizing his relationships with the school, with particular attention to the connection between process and product and to the aesthetic dimension. In this perspective, the essay will focus on the removed legacy of educational theatre and on the developments of the relationships between theatre and school in the following decades until now, trying to show how some principles of that particular experience have a new role in our contemporary world, marked by risk of individualism, by the distrust in public institutions and by the absence of desire. A kind of uneasiness that Miguel Benasayag calls “the era of sad passions” and Massimo Recalcati, referring to the school, defines Narcissus School.