Popular theatre, local development and the performance paradigm: the case of the “Poor Theatre” of Monticchiello.

Can the popular theatre be also a means for local development? The case of the “Poor Theatre” of Monticchiello, a village in the heart of Val d’Orcia (Tuscany-Italy), shows that theatre is much more than a mere opportunity for recreation, entertainment and socialization. For Monticchiello, theatre has rapidly taken on a new and important meaning: it is a means to overcome the threat of isolation and social breakdown caused by the process of depopulation which is common to a lot of agricultural villages in Italy.In other words, “performance” can be a means for local development and the “Poor Theatre” of Monticchiello demonstrates this assumption by being an expression of an unusual collective performance which in Italian is called "autodramma" and which means that it is the people of Monticchiello themselves who are the actors of the performance, hence the term “autodramma” (literally self-drama). Real stories and problems of the whole community are represented according to the idea of performance supported by the Museum “Tepotratos” (Teatro Popolare Tradizionale Toscano) that is a remarkable example of sensory experience. A set of stimuli surrounds the visitors: not only objects but also voices, sounds, images, pictures. The space, in fact, is built “theatrically”, and that radically changes the traditional idea of museum. Therefore, in the first place, the case of Monticchiello shows that artistic practices can promote a sustainable development deeply rooted in cultural heritage and local tradition, also, or especially, in our globalized society.In the second place, it supports the idea of an overtaking of the solid metaphor of identity construction by another metaphor: performance. A metaphor that was born in theatrical circles and that, during the time, has conquered authority in the social sciences, not only as a new perspective in theatrical studies, but also as an interpretative paradigm of the different cultural expressions and forms of art. As Marvin Carlson wrote, «the rise of an interest in performance reflects a major shift in many cultural fields from the what of culture to the how, from the accumulation of social, cultural, psychological, political, or linguistic data to a consideration of how this material is created, valorized, and changed, to how it lives and operates within the culture, by actions». After all, as Goffman teaches, the dramaturgical metaphor itself refers to actions (not the classical concept of action) that produce identity. [...]