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Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio BIOGRAPHY Romeo Castellucci (1960), director; Chiara Guidi (1960), dramaturgist; Claudia Castellucci (1958), writer; they make up the artistic core of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, the theatre company they founded in 1981, in Cesena, Emilia-Romagna region. The name they assign to the company partly reflects their artistic education. Romeo Castellucci has obtained diplomas in Painting and Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts; Claudia Castellucci obtained the diploma in Painting and Chiara Guidi is graduated in Arts, with specialization in Art History. Raffaello is the Renaissance painter who combines the perfection of the shape with the inquietude of a world which is quickly loosing its reference points; therefore he is the witness of a dramatic tension and a dynamics of technique that are trends always present in the Company’ s works. The general attitude crossing the whole works of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, although the various single differences, is just the conception of a theatre meant as art, capable of collecting all types of arts, for a communication directed to all senses and in all directions of the mind. The majesty of the visual and sound system, availing itself both of the old theatrical craft and of the new technologies, is capable of creating a dramaturgy that disclaims the supremacy of literature. A research into the fields of visual and hearing perception is developed, aimed at studying the effects of new instruments or, more often, at creating brand new machineries. In the early ‘80s, the Company stages works of its own creation, ranging from a paradoxical iconography to an autochthonous logic that proposed itself as alternative to reality. In 1986, with Santa Sofia – Teatro Khmer (Holy Sophia – Khmer Theatre), the Company stages its own performance-manifesto, in favour of a Neoplatonic and iconoclastic theatre, whose main goal is to hit the very representation, guilty of doubling a reality that should be abolished. The project aimed at freeing from the predetermination involved by tradition is later continued through the recovery of ancient mythical stories relevant to the foundation of the Mesopotamian area (La discesa di Inanna /Inanna’s Descent, Gilgamesh, Iside e Osiride/Isis and Orisis), that supplied figures out of step with history and authoresses of worlds. From 1986 to 1991, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio triggers a debate against tragedy, considered as the origin of that literary theatre aimed at moderating the most disturbed human requirements through an analysis that is detached from emotions. In 1991, on the occasion of Gilgamesh, the Company carries out an act of self-censorship with regard to whatever means of mass communication and reproduction. Pictures, videos, press articles are all banished and an advertising system per direct communication is developed, at ad personam call: nothing exists beyond the very representation. In 1992, according to a remarkable contradictory choice, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio stages the apex of the Western theatrical tradition: Hamlet, by Shakespeare. Amleto. La veeemente esteriorità della morte di un mollusco (Hamlet, the vehement externalism of a mollusc’s death) is one of the key-performances of the Company, for the theatre is undergoing a radical re-signification. Hamlet is represented as an autistic child who can survive the hostility of the world, that is, he elaborates a new genealogy, a new time, a new life space and a new language.

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Again, in 1992, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio moves to the Comandini Theatre, an old mechanical school; here it begins to conceive a childrens’ theatre, that refers to the very origin of the word in-fans: that is “not speaking”, just there where the aesthetic and relational experience is still addressed to all senses and not mediated, yet, by words. The concept of stalls as opposed to the stage is abolished in favour of giant environmental re-constructions where paths, caves, animals, woods, springs, houses and palaces become present by magic, just like in the Favole di Esopo (Aesop’s fables), where three hundred animals of various species are involved, and also in the monumental staging of Hänsel e Gretel (Hänsel and Gretel), characterised by a very long labyrinth, and Pelle d’Asino (Donkeyskin), where the floor of the Comandini Theatre was excavated until reaching its foundations and then filled with water. With Buchettino (Perrault’s Thumbkin), staged in 1995, stage dimensions are reduced to a single wooden room, where children can lie down on fifty beds purposely prepared for them, so that they can listen to the story and to all noises that go through the story and the walls. In 1995 the whole trilogy of Orestea (una commedia organica?) (Oresteia – an organic tragedy?) is staged, the first incursion into the territory of classical tragedy. Fiction is set in the abnormal truth of the actor’s body. The stage-setting makes use of technology in order to bring forth hidden shapes of mental compulsions. In the same year, the Company tries out in the movies. Romeo Castellucci faces this challenge by producing a medium-length film, in 35 mm, called Brentano, taken from Robert Walser. 1997 is also the year of Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar), considered through the light of a huge and transversal contemporary spiritual force: rhetoric, that was born in the classic age and that became so determining in the struggles for power where Caesar died (here he is depicted as a victim). Genesi, from the museum of sleep (1999) is an impressive meditation about creation considered from a human point of view. The Book of the Genesis, from which part of the work is taken, is another main mythological text about foundation that develops the concepts of the world’s beginning; of destruction (here considered from the perspective of Auschwitz) and of destiny (Cain’s fratricide, against Abel). Here, Genesis, is represented as being already “posthumous”, like an inventory where things and art are separated by experience (the museum). The ever-growing interest of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio in the sound universe is concretised into the creation of the “instantaneous symphony” called ” Voyage au bout de la Nuit” (1999), taking inspiration from the masterpiece of Louis Ferdinand Céline. The result is a piece for and about voices, instruments, machines and images which is later on continued by the Il Combattimento (The combat) (2000), a piece of musical theatre by Claudio Monteverdi and the contemporary composer Scott Gibbons, who, since these years on, will become a steady reference point for the music work of the Company. “Genesis” is the apex and the conclusion of a wide cycle involving the work and the theatrical thought of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, which, since 2001, has started a project called “Tragedia Endogonidia”. It’s an open system of representation that, like an organism, changes in time and according to the geographical journey it covers, by assigning the name “Episode” to each phase of its transformation. This system forces to radically re-think not only of creation, but also of production, staging, organization, distribution and economy: in other words, the whole theatrical system. The aim is to represent a tragedy of the future. The word “Endogonidia” refers to those simple living beings that have – in their inside – the compresence of the gonads: this enables them to reproduce themselves unceasingly. “Tragedy”, on the contrary, involves an end (of the hero). The Tragedia Endogonidia has been sedevlopped over a period of three years, touching ten cities, and in

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each of them an interdependent Episode, but complete in itself, has been represented, and whose title is formed by the acronym of the city of reference and a progressive number. Tragedia Endogonidia, which obtained the support of the European Union within the multiyear project scheme, is not a mere co-production, but a matrix where plots of growing thoughts intertwine, and where the bearing of an open work, which is formed and of which nobody knew anything in advance, was commonly shared. Tragedia Endogonidia touched ten European cities in the last three years: C.#01 CESENA/Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio 25th-26th January 2002 A.#02 AVIGNON/Festival d’Avignon 7th-15th July 2002 B.#03 BERLIN/Hebbel Theater 15th-18th January 2003 BR.#04 BRUXELLES/BRUSSEL/Kunsten Festival des Arts 4th-7th May 2003 BN.#05 BERGEN/International Festival Norway 22nd-25th May 2003 P.#06 PARIS/Odéon Théâtre de l'Europe avec le Festival d'Automne 18th-31st October 2003 R.#07 ROMA/Romaeuropafestival 21st-30th November 2003 S.#08 STRASBOURG/Le Maillon Théâtre de Strasbourg 17th-20th February 2004 L.#09 LONDON/ London International Festival of Theatre 13th-16th May 2004 M.#10 MARSEILLE/Les Bernardines avec le Théâtre du Gymnase 20- 26 September 2004 C.#11 CESENA/Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio 16-22 December 2004 In 1988 Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio started two experimental schools: one for children, directed by Chiara Guidi (Childrens’ Experimental Theatre School); and the other for youngs, directed by Claudia Castellucci (Theatre of Descent): both were concluded in 1999. In 2000 Romeo Castellucci went back to the iconological activity he had interrupted with the beginning of the theatrical activity. With Rhetorica. Mene Tekel Peres he inaugurates an exhibition of plastic works and aesthetic-biological figurations that take their substance from the invisible power of bacteria. The exhibition place is in Palermo, at the former mental hospital of Vignicella. This exhibition is later held also in Rome, at the former Borstal of the Istituto San Michele, with the addition of new works. In July 2002, the Festival d’Avignon reserved the main exhibition to Romeo Castellucci who, at the Chapelle de Saint-Charles, displays To Cartage then I came, a collection of works animated by a repetitive motion principle which suggests the theme of the beginning as the real enigma of the world. Besides the performances, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio published several books regarding the theatrical theory, among which “Il teatro della Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. Dal teatro iconoclasta al teatro della super–icona”, (Ubulibri, Milano 1992), “Uovo di bocca. scritti lirici e drammatici” by Claudia Castellucci (Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2000), “Rhetorica. Mene Tekel Peres”, writings on Romeo Castellucci’s works (Aldo M.Grompone, Roma, 2000), “L'epopea della polvere. Il teatro della Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio” (Ubulibri, Milano 2001), “Les pélerins de la matière. Theorie et praxis du théâtre, Ecrits de la Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio” ( Les Solitaires Intempestifs, Besançon 2001), “To Carthage then I came”, writings on Romeo Castellucci’s works, by Claudia Castellucci, Joe Kelleher, Nicolas Ridout (Actes Sud, Arles, 2002). Among the considerable, autonomous video production the following should be mentioned: Diario Sperimentale della Scuola Infantile anno I by Chiara Guidi, Romeo Castellucci and Stefano

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Meldolesi (1996, 58’); Diario Sperimentale della Scuola Infantile anno II by Chiara Guidi and Romeo Castellucci (1997, 49’); Genesi, from the Museum of Sleep (2000, 60’) by Cristiano Carloni and Stefano Franceschetti; Epitaph by Romeo Castellucci (2000, 8’), Le Pélerin de la matière by Cristiano Carloni and Stefano Franceschetti (2000, 45’), C.#01 Cesena, by Romeo Castellucci (2002, 25’), A.#02 Avignon by Cristiano Carloni and Stefano Franceschetti (2003, 27’). The Company always attends the most important theatres and festivals in the main European capital cities of Europe, Americas, Oceania and Asia. Prizes 1996 Special UBU prize for the resistance, following to the exclusion of the company from the

public contributions for the experimental theatre by the Ministry for Tourism and Arts of the Republic of Italy.

1997 “Orestea”, wins the Premio Masque d’Or as best foreign performance of the year, Festival Theatre des Ameriques, Montreal, Quebec.

1997 “Giulio Cesare”, wins the Premio Ubu as best performance of the year. 1998 Special UBU prize for the Childrens’ Theatre, assigned to Chiara Guidi for her Childrens’

Experimental Theatre School" 2000 Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio is awarded with the Premio Europa Nuove Realtà Teatrali,

Taormina 2000 “Genesi from the museum of sleep” wins the Ubu Prize as best performance of the year. 2000 “Genesi from the museum of sleep” wins the Prize as Best International Production at the

“Dublin Theatre Festival” (October 2000) 2000 Grand Prix de la Critique-Paris won for the scenography of “Genesi from the museum of

sleep”, assigned to Romeo Castellucci. On 22nd February 2002 Romeo Castellucci was bestowed with the title of “Chevalier dans l’ordre

des Arts et des Lettres” by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of France, in the person of the Minister Mrs.Catherine Tasca.