Prison scenes

Abstract

The locked space of prison is often present in modern and contemporary drama, either as real condition or metaphor of the conflicts that rage inside it. As a matter of fact, Jean Genet can be considered a real bard of prison, first of all for its play Haute surveillance (1949). However, in a theatre that alters and plays with everyone’s features, the equivalence between scene and prison in the sense of new metaphorical and non-literal aspect can be found elsewhere in modern and contemporary drama. From Strindberg’s Dance of Death (1900) to Sartre’s Huis clos (1944) from Albee’s Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1962), the protagonists keep on tormenting each other. Even in Pirandello’s Tonight we improvise (1930). Armando Punzo, with his Compagnia della Fortezza, a prison in Volterra since 1988, becomes a true paladin of theatre in prison. He uses the great example of theatrical avant-gardes and neo avant-gardes, especially in the recent, latest mix between Hamlet (2001) and Alice in wonderland (2009), that is glowing Hamlice (2010). The metaphor stage/prison is fully realized in his Uno straordinario silenzio, from Krapp’s last tape by Beckett (1958), centred on a man divided in the various stages of his ego.

Keywords: Theatre & prison; Armando Punzzo; Luigi Pirandello; August Strindberg; Samuel Beckett.