Metamorfosi di Pinocchio nella nuova scena italiana

The essay focuses on four performances inspired by Carlo Collodi’s Le avventure di Pinocchio: Marco Baliani’s Pinocchio for Nigerian street kids (2004); Armando Punzo’s Pinocchio. Lo spettacolo della ragione for the convict actors from la Compagnia La Fortezza (2008); Pinocchio directed by Babilonia Teatri with actors with pre-existing experiences of coma from the company Gli Amici di Luca (2012); Pinocchio. Leggermente diverso, created by the choreographer Virgilio Sieni with the blind dancer Giuseppe Comuniello (2013). These cases differently investigate the story told by Collodi and interlace it with the performers’ biographies and stage presences in autonomous ways. After a recount of the main literary and semiotic interpretations of the novel, and a confrontation with Joël Pommerat’s adaptation for Pinocchio (2008), these artists’ processes of stage writing are detailed and partly ascribed to Carmelo Bene’s influence on Italian contemporary theatre. Thus, the heterogeneity of their pieces is acknowledged as well as their shared specific reference to the character as a dramaturgical device towards a deconstruction of Collodi’s plot, also revealing an underlying shift in meaning in its depiction. In fact, in these works, Pinocchio evolves as an archetype of diversity out of an idea of childhood, whose perception it once portrayed, finally challenging both the audience’s expectations and their understanding of today’s social life.