Acting Plato. A surprising theatrical peripeteia where thought becomes flesh

Abstract

If staging a Shakespearean play requires giving body and voice to a whirlwind of feelings and emotions, staging a dialogue by Plato requires  giving body and voice to a flow of thoughts. In both cases, the key is the word, which in theatre can become flesh, sound and action. Bringing Plato onto a stage presupposes specific work on the text, since the philosophical language must also become a theatrical language: how? Starting from a scrupulous translation to arrive at a fluid, musical, rhythmic phrasing that stimulates and strengthens the actor's gestures and mimicry. Almost 200 performances of Symposium and Apology of Socrates, heard over the course of a decade by a varied audience which includes, in addition to classic theatre enthusiasts, high school students - and even technical institutes - academics, orders of lawyers and magistrates as well as foreign tourists visiting famous archaeological sites - for which Apology was specially staged in English - have demonstrated that the depth of Platonic thought can be conveyed and reconsidered in an engaging, enjoyable and possibly exciting way.