Il ponte e lo specchio

Abstract

Starting point of the article’s thesis is the author's personal experience of theatrical practice and contact with other theatrical cultures, especially in Asia and, even more, in Japan. Aim of the text is to analyse the reasons for the mutual fascination between typically Western theatrical forms and practices, such as what is generically defined as Commedia dell'Arte and others that, equally generically, are defined as Oriental Theatres. This attraction has origins (even if subconscious) that are not only theatrical but rather cultural, or even better, related to cultural visions. The image of the Commedia dell’Arte - a tradition re-invented in the course of the 20th century and made mythical in the collective imagination by the theatrical avant-gardes in the perspective of a profound renewal of European theatre - corresponds to a vision of a generic Theatre of the East, repository of a sort of imaginary purity that has remained uncontaminated and unchanged over the centuries - the so-called living traditions. These theatrical visions are, in turn, the result of the construction of induced cultural identities, of distorted visions of the Other. They are thus part of a cultural imagology that rests on the sedimentation of ideological constructs ranging from mythopoiesis to exoticism, and even corresponds to an induced vision of identity of Japan and Italy. Finally, by returning the discussion to a purely artistic sphere, the importance of the dynamics leading to the hybridisation of languages is assessed, a fertile ground for the connection and construction of cultural bridges and a heuristic practice, moreover, typical of the Commedia dell'Arte, as it made hybridisation its essence, modulating and regenerating itself in European theatres, and not only, from the 16th century onwards.