Alle radici del contemporaneo. Le regie goldoniane di Luca Ronconi attraverso le fonti d'archivio

Since his debut with Goldoni’s theatre (La punta onorata/La buona moglie, in 1963 and La serva amorosa, in 1986), Luca Ronconi seems to move in an “obstinate and contrary” direction compared to the previous scenic tradition, so much so that critics have defined him as “anti-Goldonian” in his directorial choices. In fact, he is attracted by the “grey areas” and “verbosity” of the Venetian playwright’s texts, rather than musicality and rapidity of rhythm and writing. The dilated acting, the bare and essential scenography, the Commedia dell’Arte’s masks (and other traditional elements) absence are unusual, as well as innovative: all choices aimed at delving into the depths of the characters, bringing out from every single word the realism of a world to be represented even in its most anxious and painful recesses. Appointed artistic director of the Piccolo Teatro in 1998, Ronconi tackled Goldoni’s dramaturgy twice more (I gemelli veneziani in 2001 and Il Ventaglio in 2007). Behind him was the career of Giorgio Strehler, whose historical-philological exploration of Goldoni’s texts had revolutionized the stage approach to the great playwright, leaving an indelible mark on the Piccolo Teatro’s productions and repertoire. Faced with Strehler’s communicative model, which destabilizes the spectator by reducing the word to pure phonic matter, Ronconi once again chose an inverse path: he delved into the pauses in the text and the recesses of the characters’ psyches to arrive at the contemporary theme of the disintegration of identity. The analysis of the two productions, both born in the context of the Piccolo Teatro - Theatre of Europ, will be carried out starting from unpublished archive materials (and in particular from the annotated scripts) preserved in the Ronconi Archive Fund at the ASAC in Venice and the one dedicated to the Piccolo’s productions preserved in the Historical Archive of the Milanese Theatre.