Giulia Innocenti Malini

Il libro racchiude in tre atti l'eccentrica ma coerente ricerca di Claudio Bernardi sul significato del teatro per l’uomo e sul ruolo del teatro entro la vita comunitaria degli uomini.

Mimesis is an innate feature of human beings. It manifests immediately after birth and constitutes a very early form of learning, substantiating interpersonal relationships, fostering empathy, and facilitating self-awareness, together with many practical and operative notions, through mirroring oneself in the significant other. The mimetic dimension evolves into fictional and symbolic ludic forms, which we have called dramaturgic, and which constitute a crucial socio-relational and cultural resource in infants’ development...

RIASSUNTO Il laboratorio di teatro sociale rappresenta il cuore dei processi di costruzione comunitaria attraverso le arti performative. Al suo interno gli individui hanno la possibilità di esplorare e definire la propria identità, personale e di gruppo. Le identità gruppali che nascono da questi percorsi sono espressione non solo delle singole personalità che le compongono ma anche del contesto territoriale e sociale a cui appartengono. Identità che si definiscono, precisano ed evolvono in stretta connessione con gli stimoli che l’operatore di teatro sociale introduce nell’esperienza. Indagando la nascita e i primi quattro anni di vita del gruppo teatrale Nonsolomamme.… di Vimodrone attraverso la narrazione dell’operatrice che ne ha condotto l’esperienza, il saggio mette in evidenza alcuni snodi significativi propri dei processi di teatro sociale e individua alcune connessioni tra il lavoro di drammaturgia che caratterizza le esperienze di teatro sociale e la pratica autoetnografica. SUMMARY The laboratory of ‘teatro sociale’ is at the heart of the processes of community building through the performing arts. Within individuals have the opportunity to explore and define their personal and group identity. Group identities which arise from these locations are an expression not only of the individuals who compose them but also of the territorial and social contexts to which they belong. Identities that are defined, specified and developed in close connection with the stimuli which the ‘teatro sociale’ operator introduces into the experience. Investigating the birth and the first four years of the theater group Nonsolomamme... from Vimodrone through the narration of the operator who carried out the experience, the paper highlights some significant hubs of the processes typical of ‘teatro sociale’ and identifies connections between the work of drama which characterizes its experiences of ‘teatro sociale’ and self-ethnographic practices.

Il saggio avvia una prima indagine sull’esperienza di teatro sociale comunitario realizzata nel territorio mantovano a partire dal 1995 fino ai giorni nostri, mettendo in luce come l’esercizio diretto delle funzioni teatrali dell’attoralità, autoralità e spettatorialità abbia prodotto risorse sociali e comunitarie. In particolare questi processi si sono mostrati capaci di offrire le condizioni per sperimentare modalità innovative di relazione tra i soggetti, individuali e collettivi, ma anche pubblici e privati, sostenendo l’invenzione di nuove forme di socialità e la legittimazione alla produzione culturale di alcuni soggetti normalmente periferici o esclusi. Inoltre si è evidenziato il ruolo importante della scuola che, comunità anch’essa, ha mostrato inedite capacità di co-autoralità dei processi culturali locali, coinvolgendo e alimentando la partecipazione attorale e autorale sia dei singoli e privati che delle istituzioni nella creazione di un tempo di comunità. The essay starts a first survey on the experience of social community theatre in the territory of Mantua from 1995 to the present day, highlighting how the direct exercise of the theatrical functions of actoriality, authorship and spectatorship has produced social and community resources. In particular, these processes have been shown capable of providing the conditions to test innovative ways of relation between subjects, individual and collective, but also public and private, claiming the invention of new forms of sociality and legitimating the cultural production of some subjects that are usually peripheral or excluded. It has also highlighted the important role of the school that, being also a community, has shown unprecedented ability to co-authorship of the local cultural processes, involving and nurturing the actorial and authorial participation both of individual and private and institutions in the creation of a community moment

The paper is divided into two sections. The first describes the fundamental aspects of social theater: a theatrical experience very common today, which develops outside the normal contexts of the professional drama and embodies the evolutionary interaction between artistic-theatrical procedures and practices and the socio- affective needs and possibilities of the person, the group and the community to which the group belongs, so restoring open forms of drama and festivities. The second section of the text inscribes the experience of the theater in business as part of the broader field of social theater and so identifies some of its distinctive features through a description of certain exper- iments that have been conducted. The text brings out the specific nature of the contribution that the theatre can make to the development of productive organizations. The theatre is particularly interesting for both a training in areas inherent in relationships and communications – soft skills – and in the development, in phas- es of change, of processes of observation and evaluation in participation with the organizational culture, fol- lowed by paths of integrated and supportive training. Finally the text presents the need for a strong contrac- tual partnership with the business, given the intensity of the work that the theater presents. Also desirable is an adequate training in social theater for those who intend to work with this method in business training.