Against social theatre

The case of Compagnia della Fortezza

Abstract

In 1988 Armando Punzo, director, playwright and actor, entered the gates of the prison of Volterra to establish Compagnia Della Fortezza, today’s first and most famous theatre experience inside a penitentiary institution. It took thirty years to transform the prison into the avant-garde artistic research center of today. With its work the Compagnia Della Fortezza has inspired hundreds of art-based activities inside Italian and European correction facilities thus contributing to the spread of an exemplary practice both from the social and political standpoints. On the other hand, while not intending to, it has also engendered a widespread belief that there is a kind of theatre that can be labeled “prison theatre”, indicating that common characteristics are found and shared by the various experiences. Retracing the history of the Compagnia Della Fortezza and the studies dedicated to it, this paper aims to show the reasons why the categories of “social theatre” and “prison theatre” are inadequate to investigate the stylistic, formal, and pedagogical characteristics of this specific experience and, moreover, to demonstrate that the important results obtained on the social and political fronts are precisely the result of a project that has always been purely artistic.