Dott.ssa MARIA MORELLI

Ricercatrice Marie Sklodowska-Curie / Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow

• Main Advisor: Prof.ssa Giovanna Rosa (Dipartimento di Studi letterari, filologici e linguistici)
• Co-Advisor: Prof.ssa Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis (Dipartimento di Beni culturali e ambientali)

 

 

Attraverso lo specchio: la (ri)significazione dello sguardo femminile nella drammaturgia femminista italiana

Adottando un approccio interdisciplinare che combina teatro, studi culturali e teoria femminista, il progetto si propone di analizzare un momento fondamentale della storia culturale e sociale italiana, la convergenza tra il neofemminismo e il teatro coevo. L’obiettivo della ricerca è duplice: si vuole analizzare l’utilizzo del mezzo drammaturgico in quanto strumento ideologico per (ri)definire il ruolo del femminile e i rapporti tra i sessi, e si vuole anche determinare l’impatto dell’ideologia femminista nel sovvertire le convenzioni drammaturgiche esistenti. A tale scopo, il progetto si articolerà in tre fasi che corrispondono a tre diversi campi d’indagine: i) contestualizzazione della filosofia e pratica femminista in Italia ii) analisi filologica ed estetico-teatrale di testi drammatici rappresentativi iii) interviste a drammaturghe dell’epoca. Il progetto prevede altresì la collaborazione con la compagnia teatrale milanese ScenAperta per la realizzazione di tre letture sceniche e una rappresentazione di una selezione di testi drammatici. La ricerca in oggetto colmerà una lacuna critica sulle molteplici intersezioni tra il femmismo e il teatro in Italia negli anni 1970-1980, riportando alla luce frammenti ancora poco esplorati della storia della drammaturgia moderna.

Through Her Own Looking Glass: (Re)Thinking ‘Woman’ in Italian Feminist Dramaturgy

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines feminist theory, Italian Studies, and Theatre Studies, this project will offer the first full-length investigation of a fundamental moment of Italian history — the emergence of feminist activism — and its intersection with the history of national theatre. The research objective is twofold. It will look at how the dramaturgical served as an ideological vehicle in rethinking the representation of women’s traditional gender roles, and it will also assess the impact of feminist ideology in rupturing existing dramatic conventions. To better achieve this scope, the project will be articulated on three main grounds: i) contextualisation of feminist theory and practice in Italy ii) philological and theatrical analysis of a wide-ranging corpus of plays produced at the time iii) collection of first-hand testimonies. Lastly, it will envisage the collaboration with Milan theatre company ScenAperta in the realisation of three mises-en-espace and one performance of selected plays. Filling a scholarly vacuum in Italian Studies, this study will establish a connection between a historically circumscribed form of artistic output and its sociological and historical context that is hitherto lacking.

Dr. Morelli holds a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Leicester. She has taught Italian literature in the U.K. (at the University of Kent and the University of Leicester) and in the U.S. (at Wheaton College), where she was Fulbright Teaching Assistant in 2013-14. She has published several articles and book chapters especially on authors Morante, Maraini and Sapienza, has translated Maraini’s La sposa segreta into English and is co-author of Women and the Public Sphere in Modern and Contemporary Italy (Troubador, 2017). She is currently working on an edited collection on Italian theatre (Mimesis 2019) and on a monograph on contemporary Italian women’s writings (Peter Lang 2019), for which she has won the Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Modern Italian Studies 2017.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 792815.

Immagini:

• Durante la preparazione di Manifesto dal carcere, Teatro Centocelle, 1971 (Archivio personale di Dacia Maraini)
• Dacia Maraini durante lo spettacolo di teatro di strada Viaggio nella memoria (Archivio personale di Dacia Maraini)

 

• Maria Morelli. 'Militanza, estetica e performatività nel teatro di «barricata» di Dacia Maraini, Quaderni del 900, Nov 20, 2020, pp. 27-36.

• Maria Morelli. ‘Performing Gender, Gender as Performance: Politics, Aesthetics and Performativity in Dacia Maraini’s “Barricade” Theatre’, Modern Languages Open, (1), pp. 6-13 https://www.modernlanguagesopen.org/articles/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.241/

• Maria Morelli (ed.). Il teatro cambia genere. Mimesis Edizioni 2019. http://mimesisedizioni.it/il-teatro-cambia-genere.html 

• Maria Morelli (ed.). Itinera (18) 2019, Special Issue. https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/itinera

• Maria Morelli. ‘Introduzione’, Itinera (18) 2019, pp. 1-15.
  https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/itinera
  

• Women Representing Women in Theatre. International Conference, University of Milan, 20^th-21^st May 2019.

• Lecture:  Il teatro delle donne, University of Milan, 21^st May 2019.
  
  
• Lecture: Italian Women’s Theatre, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA, 26^th March 2019.
  
  
• Public Talk: Il Protagonismo delle scrittrici nel ‘900 italiano, 15^th November 2018 University of Milan, BOOKCITY Milano2018.
   

• Paper: Discipline and Punish in Dacia Maraini’s Militant Dramaturgy
  CONFERENCE: (IN)DELIBLE – Representations in the Arts of (In)visible Violence Against Women and their Resistance, Flinders University at Victoria Square, Adelaide,South Australia. 24^th October 2019
  https://www.flinders.edu.au/content/dam/documents/engage/events/indelible-conference-program.pdf

• Paper: Acting Women: Feminist Views on the Italian Stage
  CONFERENCE: Northeast Modern Language Association 2019 Convention, Washington DC, USA, 30^th November 2018
  http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/past.html

• Paper: Performing the Self: Gender, Embodiment and Aesthetics in Italian Women’s TheatreCONFERENCE: Feminist Readings of Hetero-Patriarchal Sexism and Violence in Francophone, Italophone and Hispanophone Texts and Contexts, Workshops organised by the Interdisciplinary Gender and Sexuality Research Cluster of the University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.
  https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/arts/news-events/soa-events/past-events/interdisciplinary-gender-and-sexuality-research-cluster-igsrc-workshop

Interviews:

• La Maddalena Teatro raccontata dalle sue protagoniste: Intervista a Dacia Maraini, Maricla Boggio, Annabella Cerliani. Con la testimonianza di Edith Bruck’ (under review for publication).

Public Events:

• Stage Readings: Through Her Own Looking Glass: (Re)Thinking Woman in Italian Feminist Dramaturgy -‘La “donna” attraverso lo specchio: la drammaturgia femminista italiana e la (ri)formulazione del femminile. Three staged readings based on a selection of Dacia Maraini’s plays. Dramaturg: Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis; Co-dramaturg: Maria Morelli; director: Paolo Bignamini. Pacta Salone, Via Dini, Milano. 6^th, 13^th, 20^th May 2019. https://pacta.org/news