The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (review)

{ 210 } BOOK REV IEWS ing them in the work yet ultimately diminishes their potential to illuminate her argument by failing to fully analyze their content within the context of her study. Throughout the book Waters also neglects to adequately examine the impact of the “image of the black, as presented on the stage, . . . in the structures of slavery” (187) on all segments of British society, disregarding its impact on poor and working-class theatregoers almost entirely. She begins her analysis in the introduction by framing racism as an issue “altered by material social, economic , and political circumstances”(5) and addressed in the theatre,“one venue open to large, cross-class sectors of the population” (2). In the afterword, however , she acknowledges that the vast majority of her critical sources are from “published commentary and analysis, in the journals and newspapers of the middle and upper classes,” a point that is inconsistent with her reemphasis of the fact that this theatrical form was witnessed and experienced by “all sectors of society” (188). The inclusion of a more diverse cross section of audience responses from personal correspondence, diaries, or other primary materials in addition to critical reviews of productions might have yielded a more representative analysis and understanding of how intersectional cultural pressures tied to slavery, such as international trade, politics, and economics, “distorted the tendency of much English popular culture”(188) toward a limited, racist understanding of Africans in the Victorian era and theatre. Despite these weaknesses, Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representations of Slavery and the Black Character is a rich resource for literary analysis of dramatic texts and the treatment of blackness and slavery in Victorian British theatre and is a valuable contribution to the history of race in performance. —JOCELYN L. BUCKNER University of Kansas \ The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio. By Romeo Castellucci, Joe Kelleher, Nicholas Ridout, Claudia Castellucci, and Chiara Guidi. London: Routledge, 2007. ix + 274 pp. $35.95 paper. The Italian theatre collective Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio is one of the most significant European companies of the last twenty-five years. Not unlike France’s Théâtre du Soleil or New York’s The Wooster Group, they have created a sin- { 211 } BOOK REV IEWS gular form of innovative performance that challenges the boundaries of what we consider theatre to be and have developed an art of the highest standard.The company formed in 1981 in Cesena, Italy, where they still maintain their theatre . Core company members include Claudia Castellucci, Romeo Castellucci, and Chiara Guidi. The major performance works of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio include Julio Ceseare (1997), Genesei: From the Museum of Sleep (1999), and the performance cycle shown throughout Europe during the years of 2002–4, known as Tragedia Endogonodia. Under the direction and design of Romeo Castellucci , the company devises works of a highly imagistic nature using dense sound scores (often composed by Scott Gibbons) with narrative abstractions and fragmentations. The performances are frequently based on classic texts (e.g., Hamlet, The Oresteia, and The Divine Comedy). The use of “special” or unique performers, such as those with severe anorexia nervosa, obesity, postsurgical scars, or extremes of age and size, as well as animals and performing objects, creates a challenging mise-en-scène that unsettles traditional models of theatricality, illusion, and dramaturgy. The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio is a collection of textual fragments written by the artists themselves (R. Castellucci, C. Castellucci, C. Guidi, and S. Gibbons) in the form of program notes, letters, notebooks, recorded conversations , performance instructions (scripts), and theoretical propositions. Scholars Joseph Kelleher of Roehampton University, London, and Nicholas Ridout, of Queen Mary, University of London, supply critical analysis for the volume. Kelleher and Ridout offer an excellent introduction and commentaries on the performance works, which are by turns descriptive, analytic, and impressionistic . The primary focus of part 1 of the book is an exploration of each of the eleven episodes that make up the Tragedia Endogonodia cycle. Part 2 contains a series of conversations between the artists and scholars on the topics of composition, rehearsal, gesture, and the future. The work is rounded out with a brief sampling of Romeo Castellucci’s creative and...