Performare la societas. Le intersezioni del teatro sociale e della performance nella riflessione e prassi contemporanee

One thing is to see someone who is pretending to be eating; a different thing is to see someone actually eating; and yet another thing is to eat something. Theatre is the symbolic nourishment of the human being. It can be a play where someone is making a show of eating; or a live performance by someone who is really eating in front of an audience, or finally it can be where the true action of eating, cooking and teaching others to cook takes place. As we are all different, for what we enjoy in the theatre as well, there cannot be one type of theatre suitable for all. What we need is indeed a variety of theatrical forms, performances and socio-cultural dramaturgies, to create good representations, good actions and good relations for the benefit of individuals, groups, communities and the society as a whole. This is “social theatre”: a unique experience to seek and express art through life, as opposed to framing life in the form of art. We anlyze one interesting experience that we have studied. It is “Legami in spazi aperti”, a project lasted over 6 years with a social theatre laboratorie operative at Verziano, the Prison of Brescia. This laboratory has developped and promoted a very close connection with the abilities of the individuals, the treatment procedures already existing in prison and the local policy about Community Local Development for ex-deteined social reinsertion.