The invisible theater

Abstract

What we now identify as social theater is a complex of not aligned experiences applied to non-specialist areas, to the so-called, but not exclusively,  "areas of discomfort. Social theatre is a powerful non-formal learning method in which participants engage directly with each other and work together with a view to finding solutions to achieving social cohesion and mutual understanding. The theater in prisons is fully part in this type of intervention, responding to an emergency and to a collective lack of communication. In Italy, the theater was admitted among the  the social reintegration activities of detainees since the 80s, but only in recent years the attention of theater operators also focuses on the realities of recluse women. Some specifics related to the world of women in prison aggravate evidence of marginalization, discrimination and depression at the same time representing the obstacles and strengths on which rests the theater workshop. The analysis of the experience of the association “Maniphesta Teatro” in women's prisons sees the prison as a place of exploration of various languages and cultural matrices, the space in which the marginality and detention became the occasion for deep knowledge, self-analysis and investigation body. “Maniphesta Teatro” identifies different perspectives, shifts the beaten track, openings to the pedagogical and artistic challenge in order to develop interventions that use forms of theater in the definition and the development of further horizons of sense.