Théâtre et cinéma di strada dans l’Italie de l’après-1968 : l’agit-prop de Gian Maria Volonté

In 1968, the actor Gian Maria Volonté met a group of street-performing actors called “Teatro di Strada” in a square in downtown Rome, where they were improvising a performance. As a follow-up to this encounter, several “politically provocative” theatre groups were born. As a main character in films by Elio Petri, Giuliano Montaldo, and Francesco Rosi, Volonté became an icon of Italian political cinema, however he devoted a lot of time to the organisation of agitprop projects in working-class neighbourhoods to oppose the eviction of many proletarian families, in occupied factories and in support of workers’ strikes. Between 1968 and 1972, Volonté and the actors of the “Teatro di Strada” carried out about thirty actions of agitation and propaganda, and took part in several militant films, with the aim of creating an “alternative culture” made by and for the proletarian masses.