The Actor Training at the National Academy of Dramatic Art “Silvio d’Amico” and the Experimental Cinematography Centre

Nineteenth-century treatises describe a codified acting system which consisted in a complex system of rules followed by theatre companies, as the annotations and symbols on the coeval play scripts still prove. After Luigi Rasi’s death, such a system was not taught anymore as part of the academies’ and acting schools’ official training, nevertheless, part of its rules were passed down to the young actors at least until the late fifties. This study investigates the survival of the nineteenth-century declamatory tradition in the twentieth century, with a special focus on two of the most important Italian fascist institution that survived to fascism itself: the National Academy of Dramatic Art “Silvio d’Amico” and the Experimental Cinematography Centre. Both schools – which had a vocation towards the renovation of the theatrical and cinematographic acting – reformulated the traditional teachings adapting them to the requirements of a new era and, in the case of the Experimental Cinematography Centre, also to a new means of expression. The communication investigates the hidden connections between the pedagogical methods applied in these institutions and the previous tradition by comparing the memoirs and the acting manuals the teachers wrote with the treatises and manuscripts from the nineteenth century. Moreover, the testimonies, annotated scripts and performances of some of the actors who attended the two schools will be analysed in order to identify the different stratifications of the traditional technique within three generations of actors and retrace elements of continuity and rupture between nineteenth-century acting and the training of the new actors.