Revisiting the Classics in the Cinema-Scope: Vittorio Gassman’s Italian Popular Theatre

Abstract

As of the 1957-1958 biennium, Vittorio Gassman starts a moment of retrospective reflection on its activities, but also of constant action in different fields, such as theater, cinema and television. In this period matures the idea that lead to the birth of the Italian Popular Theatre on April 3, 1959: a traveling theater that involves and educates the public through a repertoire accessible to all and culturally also raised. The intent of the artistic project is to awaken the ritual matrix and pedagogical of live performance, making re-aggregation tool, and sharing. This essay reconstructs the activity and the repertoire highlighting the main news of TPI in the theater scene of the Sixties.