Throughout history and across cultures, the crisis of presence has given rise to rituals, votive offerings, and funeral cults. Since the beginning of Modernity, Western culture has employed strategies to conceal death as a tangible event, operating towards collective repression. Mourning has undergone changes akin to the transformations in conception between the “body” and the “corpse,” eclipsing the representation of death in public life.
How can performative experiences today contemplate ritual dimensions or affective dynamics of mourning? Reflecting on this question, Piersandra Di Matteo focuses on two recent works by Italian director Romeo Castellucci, which can be considered a diptych on mourning. At the heart of the analysis are stagings of W.A. Mozart’s Requiem (2019) and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (2022), both presented at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
Thurdsay, April 4th, 6:30pm
Free admission
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montréal
1200 Av. du Dr Penfield
Piersandra Di Matteo is a performing arts scholar, dramaturg, and curator. She is the artistic director of Short Theatre Festival in Rome (2021-2024), and member of the team research project «INCOMMON» at University IUAV of Venice, where she teaches “Curation in Performing Arts”. She is appointed curator of the Multidisciplinary Residency at the Académie of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Her theoretical interests range from contemporary theatre to dramaturgy, from the politics of voice to curatorial practices. She has been invited to hold conferences and seminars in research centres and Universities at Hong Kong, Shanghai, London, Singapore, Amsterdam, New York City, Philadelphia, San Paolo, Belo Horizonte.
Di Matteo is Romeo Castellucci’s closest theoretical collaborator and dramaturg, working with him in Europe’s foremost theatres, museum and international festivals. Her last publication is A bocca chiusa. Effetti di ventriloquio e scena contemporanea (Luca Sossella Editore 2024).
Reservation no longer available
