The ARCH Project: Archival Research & Cultural Heritage

The theatre company “Raffaello Sanzio” was formed in 1980 and officially founded in 1981 in the Italian city of Cesena by Claudia Castellucci (b. 1958), her brother Romeo Castellucci (b. 1960) and Chiara Guidi (b. 1960), together with Barbara Bertozzi, Letizia Biondi, Raffaele Wassen [Tamburini] and the production director Gabriele Gosti. Chiara’s brother Paolo Guidi (b. 1962) joined them the following year. Before the formation of the company, the four young artists had already taken their first steps in the theatrical world, with the formation of smaller groups, such as “Il Cantiere” (1977) and “Explò” (1978-1980).

The company was named after the great Renaissance painter Raphael. To evoke the framework of an artists’ guild, this appellation was expanded to “Società Raffaello Sanzio” in 1984. In 1990, the Latin term “Socìetas” replaced the Italian “Società” to denote expressly an affinity and union of individuals toward a common purpose.

An apartment in Rome hosted the group’s first staging, a performance
entitled Cenno [Nod, 1980], presented to an audience of a single spectator, the Italian theatre critic Giuseppe Bartolucci, who thereafter
became one of their warmest supporters. A number of experimental performances followed, including Diade incontro a Monade [Dyads versus Monads, 1981], Persia Mondo 1a1 [Persia-World all one, 1981], Popolo Zuppo [A drenched people, 1982], Maiali anziani e malandati [Pigs old and shabby, 1982] and the paradoxically idyllic I fuoriclasse della bontà [The champions of Goodness, 1983], which recounts a historical-artistic meeting between the famous medieval painter Cimabue and his student Giotto.

In parallel to theatre, the members of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio developed their work in other forms of the visual arts, including short films, such as Assassinax and L’Istmo di Chiara [The isthmus of Chiara] (both 1981), Humana Pongo [Human plasticine, 1982] and the award-winning Romolo und Remo (1984). Showings of these artistic endeavours were held at various exhibitions as, for instance, Mostra di oggetti [Exhibition of objects, Rome, 1983] and Video Sound Art (Cesena, 1984), where the visual installation, Tappeto maior [Major carpet], was presented as a performance.

Moreover, the company sought to create new modes of expression beyond those traditionally found in dramatic art. For instance, they organized a series of rhetoric actions, the so-called oratorie (starting from 1983). These oratories functioned as abrupt interventions, frequently in non-theatrical spaces, during which a polemic text was declaimed in front of an audience demanding a level of “Ciceronian rhetoric”. Furthermore they attempted to replace dramatic speech with an invented elliptical language, the lingua generalissima. This linguistic system, created by Claudia Castellucci, was structured hierarchically in four levels, whereby a set of eight hundred senses are reduced to four terms: agone, apotema, meteora, blok. The lingua generalissima was incorporated in productions such as Kaputt Nekropolis (1984) and Interferon (1984).

The production Santa Sofia. Teatro Khmer [Saint Sophia. Khmer Theatre, 1986] marks an elemental and creative phase of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio that still reverberates in their productions today. Through an explosive text on iconoclasia, the famous manifesto of Claudia Castellucci, the company declared a “holy war” against fake images. Other performances developing this idea, include the Miserabili [The Miserables, 1987], in which the audience watched a standing herald who remained motionless and speechless throughout the duration of the show. Here the concept of speech reduced to silence and immobility is further explored and elaborated.
 

The end of the 1980s signals another creative phase, as the company
turned toward archetypal myths of non-western provenance, the element of initiation and rituality, as well as towards a strong presence
of animals on stage. Performances during this period include the trilogy Il gran reame della adolescenza [The great kingdom of adolescence, 1988], performed in three levels: under, on and above the earth, the pastoral-lyrical play Alla bellezza tanto antica [In praise of such ancient beauty, 1988], the impressive La discesa di Inanna [The descent of Inanna, 1989] which brought animals in the forefront of the stage and Gilgamesh (1990), a ritual performance which evoked the Mysteries of Eleusis, the celebrated religious rites of ancient Greece, and particularly the notion of εποπτεία (epopteia). In the same circle belong Iside e Osiride [Isis and Osiris, 1990] and the unicum Ahura Mazda (1991). The last of these was staged in an old technical school that later became the Comandini theatre. The teatro Comandini remains the permanent workspace of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio.
 

Also during this time, the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio expanded their activities to children’s theatre. Their most important contributions in this domain include Le favole di Esopo [Aesop’s fables, 1992], where some three hundred animals take over the Comandini theatre, Hänsel e Gretel (1993), set in a 200m labyrinth resembling the human digestive tract; and the highly successful Buchettino [Little Tom Thumb, 1995], where fifty very young spectators listen to the story of Tom Thumb tucked in bed under blankets, inside a small wooden house. The company’s engagement with children’s theatre will continue in the next decades, with several more productions.

The year 1992 constitutes an important landmark, as the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio decides to measure itself against the great dramatic tradition of Europe, by staging Amleto. La veemente esteriorità della morte di un mollusco [Hamlet. The vehement exteriority of a mollusc’s
death], a groundbreaking performance in which the main character was presented as an autistic child in a one-man-show by the actor Paolo Tonti. Framed in a closed circuit consisting of battery devices, electrical turbines, compressors and children’s toys, Hamlet-Oratio creates a hyper-icon of theatrical mimesis, setting the performer and his actions in the very centre of the stage.

The question of the actor’s passive activity will preoccupy the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio also in the next performance, Masoch. I trionfi del teatro come potenza passiva, colpa e sconfitta [Masoch. The triumphs of theatre as a passive, guilty and hidden power, 1993]. Here the theatrical stage becomes a place of passivity, where the game played by the actor is that of the theatrical double between acting and being the recipient of the action.