Gian Carlo Riccardi’s Theatre: Some Psychological Considerations

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse the avant-garde theatre and performances of the multimedia Italian artist Gian Carlo Riccardi (1933-2015). Our psychological analysis examines the Teatro Laboratorio Arti Visive, born in the 1960s, which stands as privileged space for experimentation and the contamination of different and often constructively contradictory languages thanks to the renunciation of words in favour of an activity essentialised in slow and rhythmic gestures. It is an extremely poor theatre, deliberately “crude”, where the pièces become cultural provocations based essentially on the anti-spectacle and the simple gestuality of manual work. This study intends to show the chronological and thematic evolution of Gian Carlo Riccardi’s avant-garde theatre, from the birth of the “Gruppo Teatro Laboratorio Arti Visive” to the “Teatro dell’Immagine”, as well as his plays and performances, emphasising their connection to a current and international debate related to public art. His works, in fact, build an open and participatory dialogue with the place and the audience that enjoys the work. Riccardi carries out his research in the field of theatrical communication, but the prevailing characteristic of his performances lies in the pictorial assumptions from which they start, because his is a kind of painting theatre, a “theatre of images”.