The voice exists despite the impossibility of fully locating it. Ephemeral, transitory, incorporeal, it is an event that sinks into the concrete quality of the flesh, of the sound organs. It emanates from the body but it is part of the world, a “missile” with its own trajectory. What happens if its “paradoxical topology – its inability to decide between body and language – becomes the subject matter of playwriting focusing on the evidence of this “refuse”?
The seminar held by Piersandra Di Matteo looks at the relationship between the contemporary stage, the voice and playwriting, exploring taking the floor to speak, the nomadic transmigration of words from body to body, the crisis of the speaker who cannot represent himself as spokesperson, issues that shape writing for the stage with devices probing the outer edges of the performable.
Piersandra Di Matteo is a scholar, playwright and curator in the field of performance art. She is a member of the INCOMMON research group at the Università Iuav in Venice, where she teaches curating in the performance arts. Her theoretical interests range from contemporary theatre to dramaturgy and from the politics of voice to curatorial practice. In recent years she has held conferences and seminars in research centres in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Amsterdam, New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, and she is visiting scholar at the MESTC/CUNY in New York (2017).
For years she has been the closest theoretical collaborator of Romeo Castellucci, with whom she works in the most important international festivals and theatres. In recent years she has also collaborated as playwright with Argentinian director Lola Arias. She was artistic curator of the Atlas of Transitions Biennale (2017-2020) for ERT. She is currently the artistic director of Rome’s Short Theatre (2022-2024).