”I grandi temi dell’esistenza”. Dialoghi delle carmelitane nella regia di Luca Ronconi (1988)

Abstract

Luca Ronconi’s theatre is influenced by his youthful years, spent at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome. Ronconi, indeed, attended the Academy from 1951 to 1953 as a student actor. Orazio Costa’s theatrical elements – although Ronconi never obeyed to his master’s method (Ronconi 2000) – emerged in 1988, when Ronconi staged a play on sacred themes: the Dialogues des Carmélites by Georges Berna- nos, written between 1947 and 1948 as a spiritual testament of the author (Béguin 1954). Evaluating the case study of the stage direction of the Dialogues, this essay aims at depicting on one hand the coheren- ce and differences with academic scenic practices, and, on the other hand, to highlighting the value of the Dialogues, and their staging, acquire along the directorial way of Luca Ronconi. Why does Ronconi choo- se Bernanos ’drama? What stylistic and aesthetic devices does Ronconi take to feature “the great issues of existence” on stage? What is Ronconi’s attitude towards the actresses involved in the Dialogues? The above-mentioned questions will be answered through an historical and critical prospective by analyzing the key-moments of the stage direction of the Dialogues and by tracing, at the meantime, the authorial features that characterized them.