The bard does not want to die (behind bars) : rewriting Shakespeare inside Volterra’s maximum-security prison

The essay will explore how Shakespeare is a pivotal and much staged author among theatrical companies of convicts in a country, such as Italy, where the government has declared a state of emergency over its prison system. Many of these chronic overcrowded prisons, which even the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has recently declared humiliating and unlawful, are in spite of everything a breeding ground for actors and directors who very often appropriate the work of the Elizabethan playwright. The most known case is that of director Fabio Cavalli working with the company Compagnia del Carcere di Rebibbia, whose work has become the subject for Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's film "Cesare deve morire", winner of the Golden Bear at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival. The essay will focus in particular on the work of the theatrical laboratory of the prison of Volterra (“Laboratorio Teatrale nel Carcere di Volterra”), launched in August 1988 and managed by Armando Punzo. Inside a Medici fortress, convicts have discovered that onstage “they have the opportunity of dealing with cultural and philosophical questions which they would not have attempted to address when outside” (A. Punzo) and they have often wrestled with Shakespeare’s works: "Macbeth" (2000), "Amleto" (2001), "Hamlice – Saggio sulla fine di una civiltà", "Romeo e Giulietta – Mercuzio non vuole morire" (2011), "Mercuzio non vuole morire. La vera tragedia di Romeo e Giulietta" (2012). On the one hand it will analyse the way Shakespeare has been appropriated by the company in compelling shows which can be truly defined as “post-dramatic”, being dense of staging and choreographic ideas, words, music and actions. On the other hand, it will try to read the Volterra’s experience within the more general context of Italian prison companies and show how the experiment has become a seed of cultural revolution which pulled down geographical and metaphorical bars; as a matter of fact, Volterra’s programme of drama therapy has been such a success that it has been exported to the jail of Roumieh, a village north-east of Beirut in Lebanon.