Chapter 5 - Mussolini the Impresario, II

Summary

The culminating chapter, “Mussolini the Impresario, II: Fascism and the Theatre for Masses,” provides a panoramic look at the numerous regime-sponsored theatrical endeavors developed mainly in the 1930s. Breaking with the tendency to read these as a rupture with the more liberal, vanguard proposals of the 1920s, the author draws several lines of continuity between fascism’s two decades and across a variety of performance-related initiatives – including the Carri di Tespi mobile theatres, the Theatrical Saturday for urban laborers, the Fascist University Groups’ Experimental Playhouse Network, the National Institute for Ancient Drama, and the foundation of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts – and considers them as single elements of a comprehensive plan that sought to meet the dictator’s explicit call for a production system that would simultaneously provide access, pedagogy, and innovation. The chapter offers a new concept for understanding the regime’s theatrical politics: neither the so-called aestheticization of politics nor the politicization of aesthetics, Mussolini's method was that of a strategic aestheticism, which would nevertheless satisfy the needs of art and of politics at one and the same time.