Embodied Voice and the Body Politic: The Dialoghi of Leone de’ Sommi
type: Item
Type of information: source
Field: lighting and projection
Field: scenography
context: Leone de’ Sommi’s sixteenth-century treatise on stagecraft, Quattro dialoghi in materia di rappresentazioni sceniche, defines drama as a mirror of human life and society. For Leone, dramatic form is patterned on the human body, its meaning conveyed through gesture and vocalization. While Leone’s theatrical worldview seems to embrace civic unity, I argue that it also reflects the anxieties of a period of aggressive marginalization of Italian Jewish communities due to the rise of ghettos. The Dialoghi develop a counter-argument to the dominant humanist (Christian) narrative of theater’s origins and de-center the Aristotelian model, citing Hebrew scripture as drama’s highest ancient authority. Moreover, de’ Sommi’s prescriptions for actors’ uses of voice and body in performance dramatize the politically and socially charged relationships of Mantua’s Jewish artists and artisans to the Gonzaga court. Through his dramatic theory, Leone de’ Sommi enacts a challenge to the structural and ideological confines of the ghetto.
Publication date: 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z
Copy available online: https://doi.org/10.5070/C382038484
Copy available online: 3vj0v2wd
mentions: Quatro Dialoghi in materia di rapresentazioni sceniche (treatise on)
mentions: Quatro Dialoghi in materia di rapresentazioni sceniche
mentions: Leone de' Sommi
language: English
Publisher (txt): California Italian Studies
author: Helou, Ariane
Canon document public ID: 1347