Rapt and En-chanted: Carmelo Bene’s Voice and the Beyond of Theatre

Abstract

Carmelo Bene (1937–2002) was an Italian theatre artist who radically transformed the practice and conception of Western theatre from a series of points of view. He dramaturgically re-conceived famous plays, innovatively worked on voice, and reached to film and music, as well as engaged his theatre vision with philosophy. This introductory essay on Bene’s philosophical thought and theatrical praxis seeks to arouse interest in his work among English readers, so as to spark interdisciplinary conversations across a variety of fields including Italian studies, critical theory, European theatre, film studies, performance philosophy, and aesthetics. To elucidate some of the distinctive and exemplificatory traits of Benean anti-representational theatre, special attention is paid to one of his readings, Lectura Dantis (1981), and to one of his plays, Pinocchio, ovvero lo spettacolo della Provvidenza (1998) – both of which are among the most significant performances in Bene’s career.