Valentina Valentini, <i>New Theater Made in Italy 1963-2013</i>
10.13125/2039-6597/3411
Valentina Valentini’s New Theater Made in Italy 1963-2013, a translation into English, by Thomas Simpson, of the author’s Nuovo Teatro Made in Italy 1963-2013 (Bulzoni, 2015), is an effective and innovative contribution to the study of contemporary theater, and more broadly of Performance Studies, as seen from an international and multidisciplinary perspective.
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2039-6597
3411
15
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Angela Albanese
Between
Valentina Valentini, <i>New Theater Made in Italy 1963-2013</i>
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between
8
Between the Texts/Reviews: Ed. Giulio Iacoli, Beatrice Seligardi, Claudia Cao
2018-05-30
2018-07-10
2018-07-10
2018-07-10
1
Angela Albanese
2018/05/30
10.13125/2039-6597/3411
2039-6597
15
en
Valentina Valentini, <i>New Theater Made in Italy 1963-2013</i>
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/download/3411/2944
8
          Valentina Valentini
   New Theater Made in Italy 1963-2013*

Abingdon, Oxon and New York, Routledge, 2018, 176 pp.
      Valentina Valentini’s New Theater Made in Italy 1963-2013, a
translation into English, by Thomas Simpson, of the author’s Nuovo
Teatro Made in Italy 1963-2013 (Bulzoni, 2015), is an effective and
innovative contribution to the study of contemporary theater, and more
broadly of Performance Studies, as seen from an international and
multidisciplinary perspective.
      The significant novelty of the volume derives from the author’s
ability not only to apply scientific rigor to the social and cultural history
of Italy during the period under review (1963-2013), but also to operate
with impressive competence across a range of diverse artistic forms and
genres, including the visual arts, music, poetry, photography, and
Digital Arts, bringing them into fertile and original dialogue with more
specifically theatrical concerns.
      This continuous dialogue inter artes makes the book a necessary
reference point for theoretical and historical discussion of
Contemporary European Theater, Aesthetics, the languages of
contemporary theater, Electronic and Digital Arts, and Performance
Studies, as well as for any wider analysis of Italian culture.
      It’s important to clarify from the outset what Valentini’s volume is
and is not, so as not to disappoint the expectations that might arise from
its ambitious title, which seems to promise a chronological overview of
a major period in Italian theatrical history. The book makes no claim to
constitute a comprehensive history of Italian theater in all its
manifestations; more precisely, it is a map of the realm of what Italians

     *
         English translation by Thomas Simpson.



Between, vol. VIII, n. 15 (Maggio/May 2018)
Valentina Valentini, New Theater Made in Italy 1963-2013 (Angela Albanese)



loosely term teatro di ricerca. Valentini uses the term ‘New Theater’
following Franco Quadri’s observation that it makes sense to accept the
terminology by now widely adopted to denote a new aesthetic and
organizational approach (rather than ‘avant-garde’, ‘neo-avant-garde’,
‘research theater’, ‘experimental theater’, etc.). The book traces out a
map of a specific temporal arc during which New Theater arose in Italy,
combining a chronological approach with a geographic, thematic, and
theoretical outline of its trends, poetics, artists, and the groups that
formed under the banner of theater research during the period
embraced by the study. Like any map that reproduces reality on a
simplified scale, Valentini’s version delineates certain aspects of the
phenomenon it examines, while necessarily excluding others.
     The volume consists of eight chapters. Each of the first five take up
a decade of activity in order, beginning with the first neo-avant gardes
of the 1960s, then proceeding into the developments of the Seventies
(including Third Theater, a crucial element which Valentini discusses
only briefly), Eighties postmodernism, and what the author terms the
“posthumous” postmodernism of the Nineties. Finally comes the theater
of the new millennium. In this final period, artists’ increasing reliance
on new technology led to spectacles rejecting distinctions between the
real and the virtual, between the organic and the inorganic. Once-
separate physical, sonic and chromatic bodies combined into a single
metamorphic aesthetic matter. Multi-dimensional performance space
was packed with a shifting pop repertoire excavated from graphic
novels, cartoons, songs, advertisting, etc.
     The next three chapters consist of critical analysis focused on
specific aspects of performance activity. The first considers the text, with
in-depth discussion of the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giovanni Testori,
and Franco Scaldati – the last of these unjustly neglected by critics and
virtually unknown outside Italy. The second thematic chapter discusses
the transformation of stage space; while the final chapter discusses the
presence of the actor. Here, Valentini is particularly interested in the
effects of intermedia on performance, including the disappearance of the
character, the dismembering of logical development between a



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                                        Between, vol. VIII, n. 15 (Maggio/May 2018)



performer’s actions, the anti-performative actor, self-fiction, and the
actor-manikin-sculpture-animal-cyborg.
      As with any map, Valentina’s necessarily privileges certain aspects
while sacrificing others. The structural organization and thematic
orientation of the book, its choice of movements, trends, poetics, artists
and groups, reveals the author’s deep background and interests in
Performance Studies and New Media (Electronic and Digital Arts). The
result is a distillate of decades of experience and publications focused on
the contamination of genres, blending theater, literature, arts, and new
media, with special attention to visual, electronic, and multimedia arts.
As anticipated in her Preface, Valentini emphasizes performance that
combines theater, art, music, dance, and new media, while dedicating
less attention to other significant phenomena of the past half-century,
such as, for example, the theater of narration. In this preference, the
author reflects a tendency common to a certain proportion of academic
criticism to marginalize work that does not fall clearly within the so-
called “tradition of the new”.
      The attention dedicated to the diverse expressive forms of New
Italian Theater (dance, music, visual art, new technologies) makes the
volume unlike others in the panorama of historical studies of the arts.
Of special value is the author’s brilliant reconstruction of theater history
into a highly useful synthesis of Italian society, politics and culture from
1963 to 2013. Her ability to move skillfully across borders between arts
and genres is exemplified by the choice of the dies a quo that begins her
retrospective: the year of 1963, marking not a specifically theatrical
event, but the birth of the poetic-literary movement known as Gruppo
’63. For Valentini, the poetics of this non-theatrical group, open to
contamination among the arts, triggered the theoretical and aesthetic
revolution that would soon overturn theater’s established structures
and practices.
      A further innovative element of the volume is its transmedial
character: the printed text is linked to a rich archival website, in both
English and Italian, that contains both original and vintage audio-visual
documentation, interviews, articles, reviews, and monographic studies
of the artists, companies, and phenomena discussed by Valentini.


                                                                                 3
Valentina Valentini, New Theater Made in Italy 1963-2013 (Angela Albanese)



      A word on the translation. This English edition of a text originally
published in Italian represents a thorough re-reading of the material,
with the inclusion of numerous alterations aimed at aiding the non-
specialized English-language reader to understand salient aspects of the
Italian socio-cultural context. The rigorous and accurate translation
provides an engaging discursive flow, and thus succeeds in transmitting
the infectious excitement of the period, the artists and the ideas which
Valentini has so deftly evoked and brought to life.




4
                                          Between, vol. VIII, n. 15 (Maggio/May 2018)




                               The Author
       Angela Albanese
       is currently adjunct Professor of Theory and Practice of
Translation at the University of Verona. She focuses her research on
Comparative Literature, Theory of Translation and Contemporary
Theatre. Among her publications, the books Metamorfosi del Cunto di
Basile. Traduzioni, riscritture, adattamenti (Longo 2012); L’artefice aggiunto.
Riflessioni sulla traduzione in Italia: 1900-1975 (ed. with F. Nasi, Longo
2015); Identità sotto chiave. Lingua e stile nel teatro di Saverio La Ruina
(Quodlibet 2017).

      Email: angela.albanese@unimore.it



                               The review
Date sent: 15/03/2018
Date accepted: 30/04/2018
Date published: 31/05/2018



                     How to quote this review
Albanese, Angela, “Valentina Valentini, New Theater Made in Italy 1963-
2013”, Spazi tra le nuvole. Lo spazio nel fumetto, Eds. G.V. Distefano, M.
Guglielmi,      L.     Quaquarelli,        Between,     VIII.15     (2018),
http://www.betweenjournal.it




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