Ermanna Montanari on Cantiere Dante's Global Expansion and the Poetics of Fog

Ermanna Montanari of Teatro delle Albe discusses the evolution of Cantiere Dante, a participatory theater project that began in Ravenna with Inferno and continued in Matera with Purgatorio. The project will conclude in 2021, the 600th anniversary of Dante's death, with Paradiso staged in both Ravenna and Romania. After this summer's performance in Matera (European Capital of Culture), the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested the project be exported to five continents. Montanari emphasizes that rather than exporting a format, they will engage local residents in the Bronx, Buenos Aires, and other cities, translating and mediating to create authentic relationships. The project also includes Fedeli all'amore, a seven-part polyptych based on Marco Martinelli's text about Dante and the present. Montanari describes Fedeli as an entropic dissolution of the body into sound and voice, where the actor's body becomes political and poetic. She discusses the collaboration with composer Luigi Ceccarelli, focusing on the concept of 'fog' as a maternal substance that makes the body hollow and voice cavernous. The performance features invectives against corruption and Italy. Montanari reflects on Dante's Paradiso as a theater of movement, where light emerges from darkness, and the audience shares in the emergence of light. She concludes that Dante wrote the Commedia to make us happy, and that happiness is received through grace and contagion of good acts.