Italian prose theatre is experiencing a period of great vitality but requires greater support because theatre, like oral tradition, “only perpetuates itself through practice.” This was stated by the Artistic Director of the Teatro di Roma, Luca De Fusco, during a reception at the Quirinale Palace for the finalists of the 2025 Le Maschere del Teatro Italiano awards.
“Unlike in France, for example, Italian prose theatre suffers from two disadvantageous situations. This is the country of melodrama, so lyric theatres, located in city centers, have historically enjoyed state support. Then there is Italian cinema, which was important in post-war Europe and still lives off that past centrality. But Italian theatre has also had great authors, great actors, and great directors,” De Fusco noted, thanking the President of the Republic for this “sign of affection towards Italian theatre” demonstrated by hosting the event at the Quirinale.
Evoking the finale of Ray Bradbury’s *Fahrenheit 451*, where a child memorizes the text of *The Charterhouse of Parma* recited by an old man as books burn, De Fusco said, “We theatre people are like them: because theatrical literature can be preserved in libraries, but a theatrical performance can only be perpetuated by doing it. We have a country full of amphitheatres, but only the texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides remain, and we know very little about how they were performed.” He emphasized that only oral tradition allows performances to be kept alive.
Therefore, “besides needing greater funding, as happens in France, we also need your affection, what you have shown us today, your support,” De Fusco added, addressing President Sergio Mattarella. He underscored that “no prose theatre practitioner has ever become rich. The starting salaries for young theatre workers are truly very small, but this oral tradition, this relationship between the old and the child, is something only we Europeans can maintain. There is no artificial intelligence, no Chinese polystyrene reproduction that can remove the fact that only we can maintain this tradition and, thanks to you, today we have taken a small step forward in doing so.”
Despite the challenges, De Fusco viewed the public’s interest in live performance positively, noting it is the sector that has recovered most “vigorously” after the Covid-19 pandemic. “Theatres are generally full,” he reported, adding that the Teatro di Roma’s Argentina Theatre has seen 85% attendance and the reopening of the Ostia Antica theatre has recorded “a consistent sell-out run. But this is not an isolated case; it concerns the general situation of all Italian theatre.”