Socetas Raffaello Sanzio

BIOGRAPHY
Romeo Castellucci (1960), director; Chiara Guidi (1960), dramaturgist; Claudia Castellucci (1958),
writer; they make up the artistic core of Socetas Raffaello Sanzio, the theatre company they
founded in 1981, in Cesena, Emilia-Romagna region.
The name they assign to the company partly reflects their artistic education. Romeo Castellucci has
obtained diplomas in Painting and Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts; Claudia Castellucci
obtained the diploma in Painting and Chiara Guidi is graduated in Arts, with specialization in Art
History.
Raffaello is the Renaissance painter who combines the perfection of the shape with the inquietude
of a world which is quickly loosing its reference points; therefore he is the witness of a dramatic
tension and a dynamics of technique that are trends always present in the Company s works.
The general attitude crossing the whole works of Socetas Raffaello Sanzio, although the various
single differences, is just the conception of a theatre meant as art, capable of collecting all types of
arts, for a communication directed to all senses and in all directions of the mind.
The majesty of the visual and sound system, availing itself both of the old theatrical craft and of the
new technologies, is capable of creating a dramaturgy that disclaims the supremacy of literature.
A research into the fields of visual and hearing perception is developed, aimed at studying the
effects of new instruments or, more often, at creating brand new machineries.
In the early 80s, the Company stages works of its own creation, ranging from a paradoxical
iconography to an autochthonous logic that proposed itself as alternative to reality.
In 1986, with Santa Sofia Teatro Khmer (Holy Sophia Khmer Theatre), the Company stages
its own performance-manifesto, in favour of a Neoplatonic and iconoclastic theatre, whose main
goal is to hit the very representation, guilty of doubling a reality that should be abolished.
The project aimed at freeing from the predetermination involved by tradition is later continued
through the recovery of ancient mythical stories relevant to the foundation of the Mesopotamian
area (La discesa di Inanna /Inannas Descent, Gilgamesh, Iside e Osiride/Isis and Orisis), that
supplied figures out of step with history and authoresses of worlds.
From 1986 to 1991, Socetas Raffaello Sanzio triggers a debate against tragedy, considered as the
origin of that literary theatre aimed at moderating the most disturbed human requirements through
an analysis that is detached from emotions.
In 1991, on the occasion of Gilgamesh, the Company carries out an act of self-censorship with
regard to whatever means of mass communication and reproduction. Pictures, videos, press articles
are all banished and an advertising system per direct communication is developed, at ad personam
call: nothing exists beyond the very representation.
In 1992, according to a remarkable contradictory choice, Socetas Raffaello Sanzio stages the apex
of the Western theatrical tradition: Hamlet, by Shakespeare. Amleto. La veeemente esteriorit
della morte di un mollusco (Hamlet, the vehement externalism of a molluscs death) is one of
the key-performances of the Company, for the theatre is undergoing a radical re-signification.
Hamlet is represented as an autistic child who can survive the hostility of the world, that is, he
elaborates a new genealogy, a new time, a new life space and a new language.
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Again, in 1992, Socetas Raffaello Sanzio moves to the Comandini Theatre, an old mechanical
school; here it begins to conceive a childrens theatre, that refers to the very origin of the word infans: that is not speaking, just there where the aesthetic and relational experience is still addressed
to all senses and not mediated, yet, by words.
The concept of stalls as opposed to the stage is abolished in favour of giant environmental reconstructions where paths, caves, animals, woods, springs, houses and palaces become present by
magic, just like in the Favole di Esopo (Aesops fables), where three hundred animals of various
species are involved, and also in the monumental staging of Hnsel e Gretel (Hnsel and Gretel),
characterised by a very long labyrinth, and Pelle dAsino (Donkeyskin), where the floor of the
Comandini Theatre was excavated until reaching its foundations and then filled with water. With
Buchettino (Perraults Thumbkin), staged in 1995, stage dimensions are reduced to a single
wooden room, where children can lie down on fifty beds purposely prepared for them, so that they
can listen to the story and to all noises that go through the story and the walls.
In 1995 the whole trilogy of Orestea (una commedia organica?) (Oresteia an organic
tragedy?) is staged, the first incursion into the territory of classical tragedy. Fiction is set in the
abnormal truth of the actors body. The stage-setting makes use of technology in order to bring
forth hidden shapes of mental compulsions.
In the same year, the Company tries out in the movies. Romeo Castellucci faces this challenge by
producing a medium-length film, in 35 mm, called Brentano, taken from Robert Walser.
1997 is also the year of Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar), considered through the light of a huge and
transversal contemporary spiritual force: rhetoric, that was born in the classic age and that became
so determining in the struggles for power where Caesar died (here he is depicted as a victim).
Genesi, from the museum of sleep (1999) is an impressive meditation about creation considered
from a human point of view. The Book of the Genesis, from which part of the work is taken, is
another main mythological text about foundation that develops the concepts of the worlds
beginning; of destruction (here considered from the perspective of Auschwitz) and of destiny
(Cains fratricide, against Abel). Here, Genesis, is represented as being already posthumous, like
an inventory where things and art are separated by experience (the museum).
The ever-growing interest of the Socetas Raffaello Sanzio in the sound universe is concretised into
the creation of the instantaneous symphony called Voyage au bout de la Nuit (1999), taking
inspiration from the masterpiece of Louis Ferdinand Cline. The result is a piece for and about
voices, instruments, machines and images which is later on continued by the Il Combattimento
(The combat) (2000), a piece of musical theatre by Claudio Monteverdi and the contemporary
composer Scott Gibbons, who, since these years on, will become a steady reference point for the
music work of the Company.
Genesis is the apex and the conclusion of a wide cycle involving the work and the theatrical
thought of Socetas Raffaello Sanzio, which, since 2001, has started a project called Tragedia
Endogonidia. Its an open system of representation that, like an organism, changes in time and
according to the geographical journey it covers, by assigning the name Episode to each phase of
its transformation. This system forces to radically re-think not only of creation, but also of
production, staging, organization, distribution and economy: in other words, the whole theatrical
system. The aim is to represent a tragedy of the future. The word Endogonidia refers to those
simple living beings that have in their inside the compresence of the gonads: this enables them
to reproduce themselves unceasingly. Tragedy, on the contrary, involves an end (of the hero). The
Tragedia Endogonidia has been sedevlopped over a period of three years, touching ten cities, and in

each of them an interdependent Episode, but complete in itself, has been represented, and whose
title is formed by the acronym of the city of reference and a progressive number.
Tragedia Endogonidia, which obtained the support of the European Union within the multiyear
project scheme, is not a mere co-production, but a matrix where plots of growing thoughts
intertwine, and where the bearing of an open work, which is formed and of which nobody knew
anything in advance, was commonly shared.
Tragedia Endogonidia touched ten European cities in the last three years:
C.#01 CESENA/Socetas Raffaello Sanzio
25th-26th January 2002
A.#02 AVIGNON/Festival dAvignon
7th-15th July 2002
B.#03 BERLIN/Hebbel Theater
15th-18th January 2003
BR.#04 BRUXELLES/BRUSSEL/Kunsten Festival des Arts
4th-7th May 2003
BN.#05 BERGEN/International Festival Norway
22nd-25th May 2003
P.#06 PARIS/Odon Thtre de l'Europe avec le Festival d'Automne 18th-31st October 2003
R.#07 ROMA/Romaeuropafestival
21st-30th November 2003
S.#08 STRASBOURG/Le Maillon Thtre de Strasbourg
17th-20th February 2004
L.#09 LONDON/ London International Festival of Theatre
13th-16th May 2004
M.#10 MARSEILLE/Les Bernardines avec le Thtre du Gymnase
20- 26 September 2004
C.#11 CESENA/Socetas Raffaello Sanzio
16-22 December 2004
In 1988 Socetas Raffaello Sanzio started two experimental schools: one for children, directed by
Chiara Guidi (Childrens Experimental Theatre School); and the other for youngs, directed by
Claudia Castellucci (Theatre of Descent): both were concluded in 1999.
In 2000 Romeo Castellucci went back to the iconological activity he had interrupted with the
beginning of the theatrical activity. With Rhetorica. Mene Tekel Peres he inaugurates an
exhibition of plastic works and aesthetic-biological figurations that take their substance from the
invisible power of bacteria. The exhibition place is in Palermo, at the former mental hospital of
Vignicella.
This exhibition is later held also in Rome, at the former Borstal of the Istituto San Michele, with the
addition of new works.
In July 2002, the Festival dAvignon reserved the main exhibition to Romeo Castellucci who, at the
Chapelle de Saint-Charles, displays To Cartage then I came, a collection of works animated by a
repetitive motion principle which suggests the theme of the beginning as the real enigma of the
world.
Besides the performances, Socetas Raffaello Sanzio published several books regarding the
theatrical theory, among which Il teatro della Socetas Raffaello Sanzio. Dal teatro iconoclasta
al teatro della supericona, (Ubulibri, Milano 1992), Uovo di bocca. scritti lirici e
drammatici by Claudia Castellucci (Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2000), Rhetorica. Mene Tekel
Peres, writings on Romeo Castelluccis works (Aldo M.Grompone, Roma, 2000), L'epopea
della polvere. Il teatro della Socetas Raffaello Sanzio (Ubulibri, Milano 2001), Les plerins
de la matire. Theorie et praxis du thtre, Ecrits de la Socetas Raffaello Sanzio ( Les
Solitaires Intempestifs, Besanon 2001), To Carthage then I came, writings on Romeo
Castelluccis works, by Claudia Castellucci, Joe Kelleher, Nicolas Ridout (Actes Sud, Arles, 2002).
Among the considerable, autonomous video production the following should be mentioned: Diario
Sperimentale della Scuola Infantile anno I by Chiara Guidi, Romeo Castellucci and Stefano
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Meldolesi (1996, 58); Diario Sperimentale della Scuola Infantile anno II by Chiara Guidi and
Romeo Castellucci (1997, 49); Genesi, from the Museum of Sleep (2000, 60) by Cristiano
Carloni and Stefano Franceschetti; Epitaph by Romeo Castellucci (2000, 8), Le Plerin de la
matire by Cristiano Carloni and Stefano Franceschetti (2000, 45), C.#01 Cesena, by Romeo
Castellucci (2002, 25), A.#02 Avignon by Cristiano Carloni and Stefano Franceschetti (2003, 27).
The Company always attends the most important theatres and festivals in the main European capital
cities of Europe, Americas, Oceania and Asia.
Prizes
1996 Special UBU prize for the resistance, following to the exclusion of the company from the
public contributions for the experimental theatre by the Ministry for Tourism and Arts of the
Republic of Italy.
1997 Orestea, wins the Premio Masque dOr as best foreign performance of the year, Festival
Theatre des Ameriques, Montreal, Quebec.
1997 Giulio Cesare, wins the Premio Ubu as best performance of the year.
1998 Special UBU prize for the Childrens Theatre, assigned to Chiara Guidi for her Childrens
Experimental Theatre School"
2000 Socetas Raffaello Sanzio is awarded with the Premio Europa Nuove Realt Teatrali,
Taormina
2000 Genesi from the museum of sleep wins the Ubu Prize as best performance of the year.
2000 Genesi from the museum of sleep wins the Prize as Best International Production at the
Dublin Theatre Festival (October 2000)
2000 Grand Prix de la Critique-Paris won for the scenography of Genesi from the museum of
sleep, assigned to Romeo Castellucci.
On 22nd February 2002 Romeo Castellucci was bestowed with the title of Chevalier dans lordre
des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of France, in the person
of the Minister Mrs.Catherine Tasca.