Italy’s summer theatre season should be a celebration, but this year it’s overshadowed by cuts that punish risk and reward conformity. Graziano Graziani reveals how public theatre is being steered toward safety at the expense of creativity, activism and new voices.
The summer theatre season in Italy is usually a celebration: streets and squares filled with performances, ideas and audiences eager for discovery. In 2023, that festive atmosphere was overshadowed by “the spectre of ministerial cuts,” as Graziano Graziani observes in Lucy – Sulla Cultura. Historic theatres and festivals were downgraded or excluded from funding, while mid-tier venues, often less daring in programming, found themselves unexpectedly elevated. Though some of these cuts were reversed at the end of July, the episode revealed structural tensions that go far beyond a single year’s budget.
For Graziani, these decisions are not neutral or merely bureaucratic; they reflect “a very specific vision of what public theatre should be in Italy.” This vision privileges financial prudence, predictability and conformity over experimentation and pluralism, creating a system where “what was considered ‘rewarding’ becomes ‘penalising.’” The controversy extends beyond Florence, where the Teatro della Pergola lost its “national theatre” status, triggering the resignation of three minority members of the Drama Committee. Angelo Pastore, one of the resigning members, warned that the issue “goes far beyond the Florentine case and concerns the stability of the entire theatre sector.”
The brunt of the cuts has fallen on contemporary theatre and dance – the workhorses of innovation, inclusion and civic engagement. Organisations exploring new dramaturgical forms, audience development and socially conscious work found themselves penalised. Some were even marked down for adopting inclusive language, such as the schwa (a gender-neutral symbol proposed in place of the feminine “-a” and masculine “-o” suffix to Italian nouns). Santarcangelo, a festival long associated with experimental performance and activism, saw its score drop from 28.3/35 to 14. Graziani emphasises that this is not merely a matter of artistic taste: “The exercise of criticism is one thing, and the limitation of expressive possibilities, compromised by cuts… is quite another.”
Central to the problem is the Ministry’s conception of “quality”, which Graziani describes as a mix of financial adequacy, network building and numerical metrics. Programming, innovation or audience engagement, core measures of artistic vitality, are secondary. The Ministry, he warns, risks acting as “a sort of ‘abnormal’ artistic director, aiming to entirely direct the tastes of Italians.”
The consequences of these policies are both political and structural, the article suggests. Historic institutions like the Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione and the Teatro Metastasio in Prato, known for supporting independent companies, have been penalised, while theatres with weaker artistic profiles in centre-right regions were promoted. Graziani notes that the pattern appears arbitrary in some regions, such as Sardinia, and politically convenient in others. Yet he insists the problem predates the current government: centralisation under the Franceschini reform concentrated resources in a few politically controlled institutions, undermining the decentralised, diverse network that has historically defined Italian theatre.
Perhaps most worrying is the effect on public theatre as a civic institution. Drawing on Paolo Grassi’s vision of theatre as “a tool for growth, artistic risk and social maturation accomplished as a collective ritual,” Graziani critiques the push toward “safe” productions featuring already well-known performers or celebrities. “One wonders whether it makes sense to finance an enterprise like the public theatre to channel taxpayers’ money to artists who are already widely recognised… simply to flaunt a ‘sell-out’,” he writes.
There is also a human cost. Theatre workers, both established artists and emerging voices, face precarious contracts and uneven income. Policy decisions, Graziani points out, are informed more by the interests of theatre entrepreneurs and managers than by those of the artists themselves. “It’s as if, at a negotiating table on metalworkers, only the employers were listened to, not the unions,” he observes.
As a remedy, Graziani and advocacy bodies such as Cresco propose a vocation-based system: funding tailored to the mission of each theatre or festival, whether it be dance, new drama, tradition or community engagement. They call for reforms in touring and distribution to prevent overproduction of works that rarely reach audiences and for the creation of income protections that would allow artists to take risks without facing economic ruin.
In Graziani’s view, the stakes are existential. Rather than encouraging artistic vitality, the Ministry’s policies risk “worsening the disproportion between old and new players and confirming the vested interests of those institutional bodies most directly under political control.” The result is a theatre system that is, in his words, “gerontocratic, bloodless and… lacking a shred of imagination.”
Original article (“L’assurda guerra del Governo al teatro italiano”) by Graziano Graziani was published in Italian on 6 August 2025.
It is available here.
Lucy – Sulla Cultura is an Italian multimedia magazine and platform that explores culture, arts and current events through a monthly themed approach. It features articles, illustrations and audio-video contributions to offer diverse perspectives on various topics, including urban issues, modern spirituality and philosophy.
