Carmelo Bene and the gap in the actor’s gesture

Abstract

When Italian actor, director, and writer Carmelo Bene conceived Lorenzaccio (1986), under the same title he created a philosophical tale and a performance about Lorenzino De’ Medici. In these works, Bene offers a provocative reflection on the relation existing between the presentness of the act and the historiographical attempt to account for it, once it has passed and been deemed historical action. Questioning representation as a tool of historiography and an instrument of psychological investigation of the subject’s intention, Bene places the act within the domain of performance and removes it from the domain of history. Hence, he shifts his focus from the historical action to the performatic experience embedded in the actor’s gesture. In this article, the author shows how Bene offers a theatre as philosophy in performance, where the actor contributes to understanding the intellectual reach of the act of performing and seizes its potential in critiquing humanist models of subjectivity and history.