Shakespeare in Italian Youth Detention Centres

Mariacristina Cavecchi

doi:10.54103/st.227

Shakespeare in Italian Youth Detention Centres

Authors

Mariacristina Cavecchi

University of Milan

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5575-0584 (unauthenticated)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54103/st.227.c424

Synopsis

The chapter explores the presence of Shakespeare in Italian juvenile detention centres, highlighting the lack of comprehensive documentation of the activities carried out in the seventeen IPMs (Istituti Penali Minorili) across Italy. The dissemination of many of these initiatives is often prevented by the right to privacy of the minors involved, and in some cases, it is limited to the local area or to specialist conferences. Thanks to various associations and cooperatives, from Puntozero at the “Beccaria” in Milan to Teatro Kismet OperA at the “Fornelli” in Bari, from the Teatro del “Pratello” in Bologna to the Officina di Teatro Sociale Adynaton at the “Casal del Marmo” in Rome, to name but a few, one can find a lot going on, culturally speaking, inside these institutions. Many theatre workshops take their inspiration directly from Shakespeare’s works.

Author Biography

Mariacristina Cavecchi, University of Milan

Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Mediation at the University of Milan, where she teaches British and Irish Theatre and Performance.

Her research interests include twentieth and twenty-first-century British and Irish drama and theatre, focusing on visual/verbal intersections. She has written extensively on contemporary appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays for theatre and cinema (stage productions, adaptations, rewrites), Shakespeare in contemporary popular culture, and Prison Shakespeare. She is the author of The Art Gallery on Stage. New Vistas on Contemporary British Playwriting (Bloomsbury, 2024), Cerchi e cicli. Sulle forme della memoria in Ulisse (Bulzoni, 2012), Percorsi nel teatro inglese dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento (ETS, 2012) and Shakespeare mostro contemporaneo (1998).

She was the European Coordinator of TYPUS - Transforming Young People Using Shakespeare, a Creative Europe programme involving an international consortium of partners from Italy, Norway and Greece, with long-standing experience in intercultural theatre, social inclusion, and justice. From 2012 to 2018, she was a member of the board of the Italian Association of Shakespearean and Early Modern Studies (IASEMS).