International Conference "Theater beyond the Theater in a Comparative Perspective: Ritual Drama, Folklore and Reception"

In a song-culture, every performance presents a link with a ritual event, with which it shares a dedicated place, a certain executive codification, and the presence of an audience that participates in the performance of the play. The audience is deeply involved, both cognitively and emotionally, by the mimetic action that happens before its eyes. These are the conditions in which the dramatic performance was generated. In some cultures, drama has never broken the link with its ritual origins and has always had a strong social impact. Not surprisingly, in these cultures, theatre has played a powerful educational, and ultimately political, function. In other cultures, the link with ritual weakened and then faded away, to the point of turning the play into a purely literary work. But even in these cases, survivals of ritual forms of theatre can be discovered in the authors' texts, and popular forms of theatre not subject to any institutional control have continued to live on, sometimes vigorously, in unofficial and non-canonical spaces and places. The aim of this conference is to investigate the whole process of producing and staging a ‘drama’, with particular attention to the oral dimension of the composition and performance in different cultures, sometimes distant in time and space. In this way, it is hoped to gain a better understanding of the role that theatre, in all its manifestations, has played as a factor of social cohesion and education, and as an instrument of political control.

To join the conference via Zoom: https://shorturl.at/extTK  

Meeting ID: 899 2887 3027  

Access Code: 962512