The dissertation aims to explore the intersection between the artistic performance of blackness in contemporary Italian theater and the country's social stigmatization of black immigrants as a problem or national emergency. I argue that Italians live in a state of "historic forgetfulness" since they have not been able to absorb the racist discourse strongly implemented during the fascist regime. Tracing "historic forgetfulness" as an implicit ideology within contemporary restrictive immigration laws, and in the mass media focus on the illegal aspects of the migratory phenomenon, I use performance as a methodology and category to analyze the world and individuate viable alternatives to Italy's (un)welcoming reaction to African immigrants. Through archival research, interviews and participant observation, I follow the work of the Afro-Romagnole ensemble Teatro delle Albe. The Albe perceives theater as a tool to show the richness and endless possibilities contained in religious, linguistic, and cultural differences. The group's productions raise doubts on any dichotomous separation between right and wrong, legal and illegal, white and black. Working on the specificity of each individual, the Albe brings ethnic background to what it should be: one element of the far more complicated personal identity that encompass gender, sexuality, education, personal experiences, emotions, aspirations, and more. I contend that the unreasonable nature of the Italian discourse over black migration is threefold. First, migration is not an emergent phenomenon, and it has not surfaced only in the last three decades of the twentieth century. Second, multi-directional economic exchanges, cultural borrowings, and political pressuring have always influenced the nation-building process, determining shifts in the socio-cultural identity of the Italian people. Third, the emergency trope does not consider that blackness is not the product of linear genetic filiations, but rather a contingent expression encompassing a variety of shades of colours: paradoxically blacks are not always as black as they appear. The value of Teatro delle Albe stems from its ability to celebrate hybrid pluralism as a contribution to the notion of national identity, rather than its destruction, as long as it is grounded in local and historical understanding.

Last modified

• 10/08/2018

Creator

• Raffaele Furno

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2215C

Subject

• Performance Studies

Keyword

• blackness
• Italy
• performance
• migration

Date created

• 2008-12-08

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright