Theatre and Anti-psychiatry in Italy: The case of Marco Cavallo (1973)

Authors

  • Juan Carlos De Miguel y Canuto Universitat de València

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/qf-elit.v19i0.5200

Abstract

On the 25th of February 1973 a committee composed of doctors and their patients knocked down part of the walls of the San Giovanni asylum in Trieste and went out into the streets to march through the city behind a huge blue horse made of wood and papier maché. It was the culminating moment of an intensive two-month theatre workshop. The two main promoters of all this were G. Scabia, a well-known man of the theatre, and F. Basaglia, the director of the hospital. He was at the heart of the notorious and polemical Law 180 of 1978 which abolished mental asylums in Italy. The mythical event of “Marco the Horse” was the tip of the iceberg of a full programme of rehumanization of the mentally ill. The present article describes the phenomenon, analyses it and weighs up its impact as a theatrical event that gave visibility to a serious social problem and helped it to be better understood.

Keywords: Marco Cavallo; XX Century; Social theatre; Anti-psychiatry; Giuliano Scabia; Franco Basaglia.

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Author Biography

Juan Carlos De Miguel y Canuto, Universitat de València

Department of French and Italian Studies

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Published

2014-12-20

How to Cite

De Miguel y Canuto, J. C. (2014). Theatre and Anti-psychiatry in Italy: The case of Marco Cavallo (1973). Quaderns De Filologia - Estudis Literaris, 19, 65–83. https://doi.org/10.7203/qf-elit.v19i0.5200
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Issue

Vol. 19 (2014): "TEATRO DE EXCEPCIÓN": NON-INSTITUTIONAL STAGE EXPERIENCES IN THE EUROPE OF 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES

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