The project (Prin 2022) proposes a systematic investigation of Italian actresses’ and actors’ writing modalities between 1805 and 1950; the chronological extremes put the flourishing of the dramatic theatre model linked to the single artist’s flair and to the “capocomicale” company, from the birth of the Napoleonic Italian kingdom to the half of the twentieth century, when Italy too sees the imposition of the production model forced by the direction. The main target of this research is to define the notion of professional actor’s authorship in its greater meaning: therefore, object of study will be theatrical texts, autobiographies, memories, essays, literary works, as well as scripts, translations and adaptations, works not meant for publication, but related to profession needs. Furthermore, the project will also take into account the production of letters, newspaper articles, playbills, advertising works linked to actors’ and actresses’ artistic and professional activity.
The four research units (Università degli Studi di Milano – project leader, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Università degli Studi di Chieti-Pescara, Università degli Studi di Salerno) will ensure the possibility to focus on several aspects of the phenomenon, exploring the various contests of productivity and organization that followed over 150 years and the different geographical landscapes: Northern Italy (Milan), Central Italy and Southern Italy (Florence, Chieti and Salerno) will be investigated in order to study the national theatrical system’s evolution, while the analysis of international tours will allow to link Italian performers’ work with international cultural environment. In this regard, a particular attention will be reserved to gender studies, by taking in consideration actresses’, theatre company female leaders’, managers’ and impresarios’ production, the studying of which will allow a specific point of view on how different societies had related to the theme of female professionalism across the ages.
The principal and most adequate tool to gather and publish the results is the relational database Archivio Multimediale degli Attori Italiani (A. M. At. I.), already in use for some years at Università degli Studi di Firenze, that will transfer both its know-how and software for data collection and, after a few software updates, will open a specific section dedicated to performers’ writing studies, permitting the digitization and publication of rare and unreleased materials. In fact, a census of literary sources, available in manuscript and in print, of advertising sources, of iconographic sources and of audiovisual ones, coming from both private and public archives, some of which partnered with the project, is to be realized and made available to the scientific community.