IL TEATRO DI MASSA: UN'ESPERIENZA DI SPETTACOLO POLITICO NELL'ITALIA DEL SECONDO DOPOGUERRA

The research “The Mass Theatre: an experience of political play in the late post-war years” is based on the analysis of the Mass Theatre made by the Italian PCI from the late 40s to the early 50s. Born as a means of political propaganda during the 1948 election campaign, it rapidly develops from 1949 to 1951, and it comes to an end in 1952. It's started under the direction of Marcello Sartarelli with the play '48 that makes its début in Budapest in 1949 on the occasion of the Youth Festival. In Italy the Mass Theatre finds breeding-ground especially in Modena and Bologna where Un popolo in lotta and Sulla via della libertà (directed by Marcello Sartarelli) are respectively performed, they are considered a model for the following plays, such as: Domani è gioventù, Stanotte non dorme il cortile, Il grano cresce sulla palude (directed by Marcello Sartarelli), Le ragazze d'Italia hanno vent'anni and Terra d'Emilia (directed by Luciano Leonesi). In this research the study of the Mass Theatre is organized in three parts concerning: the previous similar experiences, the analysis of the specific PCI project theatre and the interpretation of this phenomenon. In the first chapter, through the most important examples, the previous theories are shown as well as the experiences connected to the relation between theatre and masses in Italy (Fascist Masses Theatre, and People Theater of Humanitarian Society of Milan) and in the rest of Europe (Germany, France, USSR and Great Britain) from the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century with reference to the theatre festival too. The experience promoted by PCI is a further proposal of masses involvement and, even if it shows some relations to some previous examples, it looks as a separate phenomenon. In the second chapter, starting from the analysis of some play works by Marcello Sartarelli, all the aspects related to the PCI Mass Theatre are considered: the presence of hundred of no professional actors (farmers, workers, students...); the organisation in hierarchic-pyramidal framework; the training courses for directors, stage designers and actors; the topics related to the Resistance Movement, the factories occupation, and more generally the people struggles against the powers abuses; the correspondence between the actors and the audience background and the events shown; the rehearsal in no conventional places; the presence of the speaker who supplies a link to the different scenes; the use of transparencies to back-project card silhouettes. The Mass Theatre is not only the play but it sums all the elements composing it; it's also a way of experimentation in theatre that works in opposition to the bourgeois theatre conventions, anticipating of more than a decade some well known experiences of research, originated in Italy out of the official circuit in the middle of the 60s. The end of the Mass Theatre is partially related to the decision of 1951 Forlì Meeting; organized to take stock of the PCI theatre experience, it ends to see its deficiencies more than its qualities, underestimating the innovative stimulus of its proposal. In the last chapter the Mass Theatre is analysed in relation to the masses involvement and to the specific directors' choices with reference to Sartarelli works and Leonesi ones too. Finally its points of contact with the neorealist cinema are considered, as this film movement is a very different model from the Hollywood proposals of the same time.