Massimo Castri, un regista-professore

Abstract

Roberto Alonge’s essay – presented as an introductory report at the conference organized by the Uni- versity and the Teatro Stabile of Turin (25-26 May 2023), on the tenth anniversary of Massimo Castri’s death – reconstructs the creative path of one of the greatest exponents of the contemporary Italian scene. The originality of his method lies in a preliminary work of critical excavation of the text, which is typical of the university professor, followed later by the actual directing work, which is properly the creation of images, organized in an organic system that conveys the interpretative key that the director offers of the staged text. A practice well exemplified by the books published by Castri on Pirandello and Ibsen, two of the authors who return most frequently in the director’s choices, together with Euripides and Goldoni. The system of images created by the director are never simply illustrative of what appears as the surface of the text, but reveal the secret of the text, as demonstrated by Castri’s first significant staging, Vestire gli ignudi by Pirandello (1976): a work that is not a melodramatic text, as it has always appeared to the critics, but a cruel Strindbergian chamber drama, which opposes male violence to the female victim’s destiny.