“Theatrology under Pressure”

Towards an History of Refoundation of Theatre Studies in Italy

Abstract

The paper analyses the deep renewal occurred in Italian Theatre Studies between the ’60s and the mid-’80s that allowed the establishment of a new academic discipline, focusing in particular on the modification of its object of study: from drama to performance, and then to theatre conceived as a complex set of socio-cultural processes. The phenomenon is investigated also connecting it on the one hand with the transformations of both contemporary performing arts and humanities, and on the other hand with its historical “precedents”. In this way the creation of Italian Theatre Studies emerges as a process of refoundation of the field, that furthermore seems to has continued also in the following decades and whose imprinting is maybe one of the strongest legacy of our tradition of study.