The Semiotics of Images in Romeo Castellucci’s Theatre
In: The Visual in Performance PracticeSearch for other papers by Stamatia Neofytou-Georgiou in
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The Italian director Romeo Castellucci suggests a new, interesting, daring, and provocative way of presentation in the field of performance and visual art. In the early 21st century Castellucci accomplishes on stage Artaud’s theory about the abolition of the text of the play and the creation of a new theatrical language. In an attempt to find a different kind of communication between the artist and his audience, the director excludes the text and gives shape to universal and nonrealistic images. This contemporary representation fills the spectator with intense feelings and deep emotions. The audience considers Castellucci’s performances as a strong experience, because, as the director explains, the images he creates remove living matter from time and space. Making use of the grotesque, the director creates a nightmarish universe. In this world the monstrous depicts all modern man’s hidden desires, metaphysical concerns, and terrors. Using as a point of reference the performance of Dante’s Divine Comedy directed by Castellucci and presented by Societas Rafaello Sanzio in 2008, this chapter will explore the pioneer, delirious environment in which human beings, animals, and modern technology combine and depict the trilogy ‘Inferno’, ‘Purgatory’, ‘Paradise’.