Piersandra Di Matteo

Piersandra Di Matteo is a researcher, dramaturge and curator in the field of the performing arts. She is a member of the PerLA | Performance Epistemologies Research Lab and SSH | Sound Studies Hub research centres at Venice’s Iuav University, where she teaches curating in the performing arts. She is curator of the multidisciplinary residency at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence Academy. For many years she has been Romeo Castellucci’s closest theoretical collaborator. Piersandra Di Matteo was artistic director of Short Theatre (Rome 2021-2024) and the Atlas of Transitions/ERT Biennial (Bologna 2017-2020). Recent publications include A bocca chiusa. Ventriloquism Effects and the Contemporary Scene (2024), (ed.) SPEAKING NEARBY (2024).

‘By rejecting a priori the romantic interpretation that sees Don Quixote as the Ideal and Sancho as verist common sense, we demonstrate instead the heroic realism of Don Quixote and the unlearning of Sancho’. So begin the notes that Carmelo Bene wrote for the ‘Don Quixote’ concert-reading organised in Rome in 1968, in a small theatre near the Vicolo del Divino Amore. The event, which is not recounted in the history of the show, marks the stage encounter between Carmelo Bene and Leo de Berardinis, Lydia Mancinelli and Perla Peragallo, following the Ivrea Conference. The residency at Villa Medici is an opportunity to delve deeper into the archives and write up her research.