Limits and Possibilities of Social Theatre

La trilogia del naufragio by Lina Prosa and La trilogia del deserto by Riccardo Vannuccini are two of the most representative Italian productions on migration. On the one hand, Lina Prosa portrays the distress of immigrants. Her dramaturgy is lyrical, but it is also able to decry one of the most traumatic events of contemporary history. On the other hand, La trilogia del deserto is remarkable in that some refugees become involved in a workshop run by Vannuccini, and that they begin to become actors in their own stories. In Vannuccini’s production, the text ceases to be the core. It emerges how the interaction with the experience of the refugees becomes an integral part of the production by way of “a sort of ” text as context. The main goal of this chapter is to investigate how contemporary drama continuesto involve itself in social and political reality and why, consequently, it calls for new forms and techniques. According to Prosa and Vannuccini, the tales of immigrants aim to mirror the multiple complexities of our times; the analyses of their works also highlight how and why the concept of inclusion has undoubtedly become a fundamental theme of our times