virtual exhibit Room four
OH, AMERICA!
Gerardo Guerrieri and Anne d'Arbeloff's Teatro Club opens a window on America, bringing the boldest voices of avant-garde theatre to Rome. The Living Theatre, Afro-American theatre, and the experiments of the New York scene become part of a dialogue that crosses the ocean. From official stages to independent spaces, this section describes the link between Italian theatre and the transformations of the American scene, between censorship and freedom, experimentation and identity.
Gallery 1: LIVING THEATRE
Between 1961 and 1983, the Living Theatre and Gerardo Guerrieri and Anne d'Arbeloff's Teatro Club built a partnership that marked the history of Italian theatre. Julian Beck and Judith Malina's company brought a new way of understanding the stage to Italy: a political, physical, anarchic theatre capable of breaking the distance between actors and audience. From its first performances in Rome at the Teatro Parioli, the Teatro Club has promoted a dialogue between American experimentation and European theatrical tradition. This relationship is not limited to the stage: letters, telegrams and press articles reveal a bond that crosses censorship, arrests and battles for artistic freedom. Through images, documents and testimonies, this section traces the stages of an encounter that changed the Italian and European theatre scene.
In 1961, The Living Theatre arrived in Italy at the invitation of the Teatro Club, staging The Connection at the Teatro Parioli. Four years later, in 1965, The Brig and Mysteries and Smaller Pieces shocked Italian audiences. But the journey was bumpy: in 1964, the company was expelled from Brussels and repatriated with 30 days in jail, forcing them to postpone their new debut. Between official documents and emergency letters, the company defies rules and borders.
Guerrieri parla del Living da programma per Antigone
This text belongs to the playbill of the Teatro Club in the year 1957. The ironic pamphlet, with an evocative title "Speech to an associate sleeping in his armchairis a sort of "statement of intent" to make Rome a European capital of theatre, like London, Paris, Berlin.
Rome, April 1967. The Teatro delle Arti is packed for Living Theatre's The Antigone of Sophocles. The audience witnesses a tragedy that becomes a protest, a collective rite, a political shock. Not only images, but also voices survive from that event: Gerardo Guerrieri recorded the performance and conversations with the company's actors, which in July 1968 became a cycle of radio broadcasts on RAI's Third Programme.
Guerrieri, Beck e Malina + Prometeo
This text belongs to the playbill of the Teatro Club in the year 1957. The ironic pamphlet, with an evocative title "Speech to an associate sleeping in his armchairis a sort of "statement of intent" to make Rome a European capital of theatre, like London, Paris, Berlin.
Gallery 2: BLACK AMERICA
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Teatro Club brought to Rome the voice of an America torn by racial tensions and the struggle for civil rights. On its stages were performances that told the story, spirituality and rebellion of African-American theatre, in a complex dialogue with the white theatre system and its power dynamics.
On the stages of the Teatro Club, African-American theatre brings its own story of struggle and identity. Black Nativity by Langston Hughes (1963, 1981) combines spirituality and musical theatre. The Negro Ensemble Company debuted in Rome in 1969 with Song of the Lusitanian Bogey. In 1970, Slave Ship by LeRoi Jones transformed the stage into a slave ship. In 1982, the songs of Black American Voices resounded in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
February 1969, New York Times. Douglas Turner Ward, playwright and director of the Negro Ensemble Company, addresses the debate over the independence of black artists in the American theatre. ‘A black artist must not close himself off to any possibility,’ he writes, ‘but wherever he is, he must maintain control over his own artistic identity.’ As his company debuts in Italy with Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, Teatro Club welcomes and amplifies this issue in the Roman theatre scene.
Gallery 3: NEW YORK
Cradle of experimentation, New York is for Gerardo Guerrieri and Anne d'Arbeloff a privileged observatory from which to draw ideas, artists and visions. Over the years, the Teatro Club has brought to Rome companies that redefine the language of the stage: from the contemporary dance of Paul Taylor and José Limón to the musical theatre of Eric Salzman, to the revolutions of Open Theatre and Café La MaMa. A bridge between worlds that transforms Roman audiences into witnesses of the avant-garde.
While Paul Taylor (1961), the Harkness Ballet of George Skibine (1965), and the José Limón Dance Company, directed by Ruth Currier (1975), were redefining the language of dance, Aldo Rostagno, a correspondent from New York, was exploring the new theatrical ferment. In 1968, Joe Chaikin’s Open Theatre formed a strong bond with Gerardo Guerrieri, who would edit the publication of his texts for Einaudi. In 1991, Ellen Stewart brought Giacinta to Viterbo, continuing a dialogue that had begun years earlier.
New York, 1959. Julian Beck writes in the New York Times defending theatrical avant-garde: a journey without certainties, a continuous risk. The term itself, “avant-garde,” recalls the military outpost that faces danger first. While the Living Theatre challenges conformism, the Teatro Club embraces this legacy and brings it to Italy, offering Roman audiences a theatre capable of questioning, provoking, and reinventing its own language.
Gallery 4: BORN IN THE USA
When Pete Seeger arrived in Italy, Alessandro Portelli, a young spectator of that concert, was one of the very few who knew “the father of American folk music” (Bruce Springsteen).
Alessandro Portelli on Pete Segeer
In 1964, the Teatro Club invited Pete Seeger, the inspirational figure behind the democratic and activist folk revival, who was still almost unknown in Italy at the time. Alessandro Portelli’s account—an original explorer of American popular culture and music—conveys the complexity of these encounters with this “America within.”
Alessandro Portelli on Joan Baez
When in 1967 Joan Baez arrives, she is already famous in Italy for her extraordinary voice and her engagement for civil rights and pacifism. Alessandro Portelli remembers the divisions among young Italian militants of the time.