Abstract
As critical discourse increasingly interrogates the role of archives in the performing arts – not only as sites of preservation but of historiographical reconfiguration and epistemological dispute – this paper addresses the challenges posed by archiving theatre practices in contexts of institutional marginality, such as prisons. Taking on a broader rethinking of the archive as a living dispositif, it interrogates the tensions between visibility and erasure, documentation and embodiment, identity and dehumanization, through the lens of prison theatre archival practices.
The need to preserve the intangible heritage of performing arts arises from the desire to prevent it from being forgotten and to ensure its transmission to future generations. However, the risk of oblivion is not merely temporal: in more hidden and marginalised contexts, such as “total institutions” (Goffman, 1961), the creation of archives enables not only the preservation and transmission of knowledge and good practices to future generations, but also the establishment of a bridge to the broader society. In this regard, prisons sadly exemplify spaces of erasure – removed from public visibility – where theatre has increasingly emerged as a legally recognised form of educational and cultural activity.
The paper proposes an integrated reflection on the archive of Compagnia della Fortezza, a long-lasting prison theatre company founded by director Armando Punzo in 1988 in the prison of Volterra (Tuscany, Italy): one of the most significant and enduring prison theatre experiences in Europe.
The historical archive of the company, comprising thousands of papers, photographic, and audiovisual documents, constitutes a site of convergence for Performance Studies, Digital Humanities, and historiographical inquiry. Drawing upon a multi-year research project and archival practice, the study reconsiders the notion of the archive as an active infrastructure of cultural memory, performative methodology, and critical historiography.
The archive is examined as a historiographical object that both conserves and produces knowledge, arguing for a concept of “functional memory” (Assmann, 1999), in which digital traces do not serve as surrogates for live performance but rather as vectors of aesthetic and socio-political processes. In this sense, the archive becomes a dynamic interface through which the performative legacy of Compagnia della Fortezza can be interpreted and reactivated.
Keywords: Prison theatre, Compagnia della Fortezza, cultural memory, critical historiography, performative methodology
