CHAPTER THIRTEEN RE-CREATING ANTIGONI: PROMOTING INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING THROUGH EMPATHY NICOLETTA MARINI-MAIO,

DICKINSON COLLEGE

Once upon a time, there were four skills. But what did it mean to be a listener? A speaker? A reader? A writer? Skills in a vacuum are useful neither for describing how well one uses language nor for how to teach it effectively.1 June Phillipss rhetorical questions address the challenge of second and foreign language (FL) teaching and learning in the twenty-first century: attaining functional communicative competence in the FL is insufficient within our multicultural societies, in which diverse communities of different languages and cultures cohabit and interact. In this cosmopolitan world, where cultural misunderstandings play a big role in social and political conflicts, intercultural communication is becoming a precondition for survival, and sociopolitical awareness is fundamental to communicate efficiently and productively.2 FL teaching and learning should contribute to fostering dialogue among individuals and social groups from different countries, languages, and sociopolitical backgrounds, and encourage deeper exploration of ones own and the others cultures. The guidelines outlined by the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages established in 2006 reflect this new scenario and aim to produce educated speakers who have deep translingual and transcultural competence.3 Theater has great potential as a means of pursuing these challenging new goals set for FL instruction in today's cosmopolitan world. Theater has proved to be a flexible and effective teaching tool inasmuch as it provides the learners with practical ways to employ the target language in meaningful cultural contexts. The acts of reading, adapting, and staging theatrical texts set in motion a multifaceted process of learning that

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incorporates linguistic practice in all four skills, boosts fluency, stimulates critical analysis, stirs creativity, and encourages free expression of the body. Most importantly, theatrical adaptations and re-creations are excellent venues for students to explore and embody the vivid insights that theater can offer into FL culture, literature, politics, and history. Through theater, students undergo what Koss describes as a process of emotional and psychological projection, or the activity of feeling into, also known as empathy.4 In other words, the embodied response and self-identification processes that take place in theater allow the students to look at the world through the diverse and unfamiliar perspectives expressed in the texts by the members of a given FL culture. It is precisely through the practice of empathy that theater can make its unique contribution to the challenges of FL teaching and learning within nowadays cosmopolitan communities. As Koss claims, in fact, empathy values emotional, as much as rational, understanding and allows for the possibility of bridging radically different subject positions, both within and across historical periods and geographic zones.5 In showing that empathy allows the students to assume, to some extent, the perspectives of the members of the FL and to turn the stage into a space of analysis and the surpassing of cultural and political clichs, this article suggests that in FL learning and teaching theater may favor the acquisition of intercultural communication skills and may help to abate the obstacles that hinder dialogue and reciprocal understanding. To illustrate this, I describe the experience of a theatrical project titled Antigoni, based on the history and politics of Italy in the 1970s, conducted in two different higher education institutions, in 2005 and 2006, respectively, in conjunction with a long-term research project on the representation of Italian terrorism in film and theater. The discussion of the 2005 and 2006 theatrical experiences focuses on the ways in which the students produced their original interpretation of the source texts, expanding their modes of expression in the FL, refining their interpretive skills, enhancing their ability to work collaboratively, and developing their own understanding of the cultural, historical, and political context of terrorism in Italy during the 1970s. In both projects, the students were actively involved in the adaptation and production of an original play, according to a process of transformation that Essif has labeled as one of re-creation.6 The empathy-focused activities used to interpret the topics and texts of the courses, and to re-create them on stage, played a central role in helping the students gain a much deeper understanding of the FL culture at hand. In addition, the experience of empathy allowed them to problematize the

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phenomenon of terrorism in historical, political, and ethical terms, and to establish a lasting connection with their own socio-cultural experiences. This article lays out the Antigoni project in four distinct sections: 1) a discussion of the concept of empathy within the frameworks of the theory of theater and the teaching of history; 2) an exploration of the current, political and ethical interpretations of the tragic archetype of Antigone, which is at the core of the Antigoni project; 3) a description of the Antigoni project created and staged at the University of Pennsylvania in spring 2005, with particular emphasis on the goals, methods, and sequenced activities that guided the original Antigoni project held at Penn, including the analysis of the historical and cultural content, the interpretation, adaptation, and re-creation of the source texts; and 4) a commentary of the remodeling of the mise-en-scne of the Antigoni project at the Middlebury College Italian School, in summer 2006.

Empathy in Theater and History

As mentioned above, the emphasis on translingual and transcultural competencies in FL teaching and learning requires that learners develop the linguistic and analytical skills necessary to participate in the intercultural conversations that take place in todays diverse communities.7 This overarching goal implies two crucial assumptions: first, in order to be able to talk with the members of a FL culture, learners must be knowledgeable about the FL culture and, second, in order to engage with the ideas and experiences shared by the members of the FL, they must be able to position themselves within the FL culture and look at the world from the perspectives of that culture. This is not an easy task. Culture does not manifest itself only as creations (products) and patterns of social behaviors (practices), but also as a set of underlying values, attitudes, conceptions, and beliefs (perspectives), and all three elements are connected and intertwined.8 In more practical terms, translingual and transcultural competencies imply the knowledge of the visible features of FL culture (products and practices), such as music, cinema, dancing, theater, paintings, literature, celebrations, food, social behaviors and conventions, facial expressions and gestures, and styles of dress. These competencies also imply the deep understanding of the invisible features of culture that are beyond our awareness (perspectives), such as concepts of self, beauty, and fairness, perceptions of personal space and privacy, religious beliefs, work ethic, general worldviews, and sense of community, just to name a few.

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Using empathy in FL teaching and learning is an excellent method to facilitate the process of perspective taking, as empathy has been defined by Downey, and which is needed to pursue the goals of translingual and transcultural competences.9 It is important to point out, however, that empathy does not consist of simply experiencing human emotions and feelings. As Jensen claims, the perspective taking promoted by empathy is a cognitive skill that must be taught and practiced, not a show of human emotion.10 Empathy in theater stimulates both the emotional processes and the cognitive skills highlighted by Jensen, and may contribute to abate the learners psychological barriers and encourage their understanding of the products and practices of the FL culture from the inside, thus facilitating the ultimate goal of intercultural understanding. In order to illustrate how empathy, or perspective taking, was used in Antigoni, it is necessary to offer a preliminary explanation of the theory of empathy, both in theater and history. Antigoni, in fact, was based on the study of the history of Italy from the late 1960s to the early 1980s and centered on issues of political violence and terrorism. Consequently, it was crucial for the instructor to first conceive and then develop ways to explore all the potential of empathy as a cultural learning tool, both in theater and history. At the same time, she was aiming to prevent the risks intrinsic to the use of empathy, such us, for instance, superficial, anachronistic, or overly subjective responses from the students. In fact, the notion of empathy has been debated at length in the theory of theater and in the teaching of history and is still under discussion. In both fields, the author was able to identify similar features that are particularly fruitful for stimulating cognitive activities, such as critical thought and self-reflection about historical, ethical, and political issues related to terrorism. At the very least, the empathy approach to theater and history favors in learners the understanding that the target cultures perspectives do not coincide with theirs and that these perspectives are constructed by historical contexts, political circumstances, ideological motivations, and emotional states. The discussion on the use of empathy in theater traces back to the 1930s, with playwright Bertolt Brechts famous theory of Verfremdung (alienation or estrangement). Brechts theory aimed to contrast the empathy theater that relied on the suspension of disbelief.11 Opposing a passive model of spectatorship, Brecht claimed that Einfhlung (empathy) was exploited as a means of entertainment for the bourgeois class. If used in an exclusive manner, Brecht argued, Einfhlung would encourage the spectators emotional identification with staged situations and prevented critical thought. The technique of estrangement, or epic theater, fought

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against such passivity and aimed to trigger the spectators critical detachment from the fictional world of the stage. However, in a journal entry of 1940, Brecht postulated the ideal combination of the technique of empathy and the technique of estrangement and claimed this strategy to be an excellent method of rehearsal.12 He argued that alternating between emotional absorption and detachment could stimulate critical thought, because neither activity could occur without the intermittent presence of the other. Empathy as well as estrangement, Brecht explained, generates emotions in a way that moves the spectator and stimulates her intellectual reaction.13 Several contemporary playwrights, directors, and actors share Brechts views, especially in the Italian tradition.14 For one, Marco Baliani, the author of the monologue Corpo di Stato (Body of State) and whose work is at the core of the Antigoni project, has based his performances on the alternation between empathetic and epic modes. As Baliani suggests, in theater, it is critical to break up the possibility of empathizing too much with what is being said, and, in fact, his monologue continuously shifts between the epic mode, in which the actor detaches himself from the events and raises the audience's awareness of it, and embodied interpretation, when the actor invokes the emotional participation of the public in his re-counting.15 In this way, as Baliani's narrative unfolds, the audience's reaction is concurrently one of stupor, intimacy, and detachment. In Baliani's words:
Si passa da unemotivit partecipe e intensa ad una distanza improvvisamente fredda, dove richiesta una lucidit del pensiero, per poi essere di nuovo colpiti da un soprassalto di stupore. Intimit e distanza si intrecciano, empatia e straniamento avvengono in contemporanea, lo spettatore vede me che racconto ma al tempo stesso percepisce limmaginario che gli sto evocando. Ci che gli appare sulla scena, il mio corpo seduto che racconta, sembra del tutto oggettivo eppure al contempo su un piano soggettivo sta vivendo intensamente unaltra realt.16 You move from an intense and participatory emotion to, suddenly, a cold distance for which clarity of thought is required and then you give a gasp of stupor. Intimacy and distance are linked, empathy and alienation concurrently overlap. The spectator sees me narrating but, at the same time, perceives the images I am evoking. What appears on stagemy seated body narratingseems completely objective and yet, at the same time, on a subjective plane, it is experiencing intensely another reality.

Similar theoretical discussions on the oscillation between affective and cognitive activities generated by empathy have been present in the

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teaching of history since the early 1980s. Counsell ironically reminds us that perspective taking is history-teacher heartlandimagination, distancing, viewpoints, otherness and (whisper who dares) empathy. We know the territory.17 She claims that empathy in the teaching of history should serve as a way of stopping the natural tendencies of pupils to project modern ideas and assumptions onto people in the past.18 On the contrary, she argues, one of the main goals of using empathy in history should be to lead students to confront the strangeness of the past and to construct more complex models of period values and beliefs.19 Counsells concept of empathy targets primarily K-12 students, but it may be useful for FL learners at any level of language proficiency and instruction, including those in higher education. Her argument may very fruitfully integrate the fourth of the five goals set by the ACTFL National Standards, namely, comparisons.20 This goal acknowledges the importance for students to recognize that cultures use different patterns of interaction and can apply this knowledge to their own culture.21 Overall, developing a pedagogy of empathy in FL education might help educators find new paths toward achieving the Comparisons goal, helping the students to really advance in translingual and transcultural competence. Research on teaching history has explored many ways in which empathy may be nurtured and developed, discussing not only theoretical aspects of the question, but also its practical implications. Cunningham has identified four critical requisites, that she has called delicate dilemmas, which can make the use of empathy effective and conducive to the active and epistemologically correct learning of history: 1) establishing a firm connection between imagination and historical evidence; 2) framing empathy activities in historical, not personal terms, and avoiding the imposition of present understanding of certain aspects of culture onto the past in a way that could elicit low-level anachronistic responses; 3) encouraging identification and emotional connections with the object of study in order to convey a deep sense of significance and stimulate the learners motivations and interests; and 4) considering the events in context in order to balance the learners opinions and ethical positions with perspective taking.22 All in all, the discussion about empathy or such perspective taking in theater and in history emphasizes similar challenges as well as positive potential. In both fields, special importance is given to the alternation between self-projection and contextualization insofar as the integration of affective and cognitive activities has proved to promote in learners psychological involvement and deeper analytical consideration of the cultural content at hand.

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The Recurring Antigone

The course and theatrical workshop held at the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 ended with the performance of a play entitled Antigoni, an original theatrical pice adapted from a number of different texts such as Sophocless Antigone (442 a.C.), Balianis Corpo di Stato (1998), Pasolinis Il romanzo delle stragi (The Novel of Massacres, 1974), and Alessandro Trigona Occhipintis Segue Comunicato (A Communiqu Will Follow, 1999), and partially written by the students. The title Antigoni is the Italian plural for the Greek Antigone, which constitutes the mythical and archetypical background of the students play. Besides some excerpts from the original Antigone, the students adaptation includes several Antigone-like characters who comment on the emotional, political, and ethical questions elicited by the issues of terrorism and, more generally, by political violence. In particular, the Antigones focus on the conflict between personal and public spheres and on the psychological and political vulnerability that derives from this conflict. In her preface to the 1987 edition of Sophocless Antigone, Italian intellectual Rossana Rossanda argues that the Greek heroine continues to recur in Western culture with a unique voice, regardless of the specific contexts in which she appears:
Certo che ad alcune tragedie si ritorna ma altre, come Antigone, sembrano tornare. Non per essere scavate e rivelare nuovi sensi, ma come allusive, rivissute. . . . Le parole di Antigone e Creonte sembrano eterne, su sfondi culturali del tutto diversi. E ne viene necessaria la domanda: quanto lAntigone ricorrente nei nostri anni ci parla dellAntigone sofoclea, e quanto invece di noi?23 It is true that we return to some tragedies, but others, like Antigone, seem to return to us. They come back not to be examined and to reveal new meanings, but as allusive texts, to be lived again to relive?. . . . Antigones and Creons words sound eternal against completely different cultural backgrounds. And this necessarily raises athe? question: to what extent is the Antigone recurring in these times speaking about Sophocless Antigone, and to what extent is she speaking about us, instead?

Despite the passage of time, Rossandas question remains valid. For centuries, writers, philosophers, and intellectuals have explored the myth of Antigone, Oedipuss daughter, who was sentenced to death by Creon, Oedipuss brother-in-law and tyrant of Thebes, for burying her brother Polynices against Creons will or despite Creons prohibition.24 Since Hegels seminal interpretation of Antigone as the advocate of the private

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and affective sphere versus the sphere of reason (of the State), as incarnated by Creon, the figure of Antigone has embodied the contradictions intrinsic to our political and ethical paradigms: between norms and laws, private and public, power and pietas, transgression and tradition, folly and wisdom. It is for the persistence of such tensions in contemporary societies that, as Rossanda points out, Antigone still inspires us and is invoked in very different contexts. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, Antigone was perceived as the essence of any form of rebellion to authoritarian regimes. Judith Malina, one of the founders and leaders of The Living Theatre, comments in her preface to Brechts Antigone:
The Living Theatre performed Antigone over a period of 20 years in 16 countriesand wherever we played it, it seemed to become the symbol of the struggle of that time and placein bleeding Ireland, in Francos Spain, in Poland a month before martial law was declared, clandestinely in Prague--the play is uncannily appropriate to every struggle for freedom, for the personal liberty that Antigone demands for herself.25

In more recent times, the Greek heroine has been considered a postfeminist voice of diffrence.26 Over time, Antigone has been seen as a problematic figure, and her many readings are philosophical distillations of the basic oppositions inherent to the human condition: man-woman, old age-youth, society-individual, living-dead, and human-divinity.27 Allusions or explicit references to the figure of Antigone also appear in the literary, theatrical, and cinematic renditions of the most controversial and violent period of Italian recent history. In the late 1960s and 1970s, named gli anni di piombo (the years of lead), Italy was the arena of terrorist attacks and guerrilla actions carried out, respectively, by rightand left-wing extremist organizations. The abduction and assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro (1978) and the bombings of Piazza Fontana (1969) and of the Bologna train station (1980) represented the most tragic moments of those years. Since the beginning of gli anni di piombo, Antigone has been invoked to stage the political and ethical dilemmas related to what in Italy was called the armed struggle or lotta armata. She appears, for instance, as an archetype of political disobedience in Liliana Cavanis 1969 feature film I cannibali (The Cannibals) and as a figure of mourning in Marco Balianis 1998 previously mentioned theatrical monologue Corpo di Stato, and she is foreshadowed as an epitome of empathy in the female protagonist of Marco Bellocchios 2003 film Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night), to name a few.28 In the two courses described in this article, Sophocless Antigone was a point of departure for the discussion of the use of violence in politics. In

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their reading of the play, the students attempted to contextualize Antigones claims about justice, solidarity, kinship, and humanity, and made an effort to detach themselves from their own assumptions about contemporary politics and ethics. In this process, not only did they learn that political perspectives are emotionally charged and culturally constructed, but they were also able to discuss how different subjects used and justified political violence in different historical contexts, from the defense of ones own country to the terrorists attacks. In other words, by positioning themselves in the past as new Antigones, students learned to explore the notion of political violence and question its ethical, emotional, and philosophical implications in the historical context the Italy of gli anni di piombo.

The Antigoni Project: An Experiment in Empathy

From the readings to the script
Antigoni is an original theatrical pice based on a real event of Italian recent history: the abduction and assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 at the hands of the left-wing extremist organization Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades, BR). As mentioned, Antigoni is inspired by, and was a unique rewriting of, several texts that the students of the University of Pennsylvania had read and adapted and then performed at the end of the course. The script was then re-worked and used by the students of Middlebury College during a six-week full-immersion summer course, the next year. In these two distinct academic settings, the classes differed in terms of their communicative skills, cultural background, shortand long-term goals, and, of course, time extension. Therefore, while the theoretical framework on empathy, part of the readings, and some of the cultural and literary objectives coincided, the linguistic emphasis and the course organization were quite dissimilar. In addition, the theatrical components, that is, the stages of adaptation, re-creation, and production of the Antigoni project, varied substantially in the two settings. At the University of Pennsylvania, the 2005 Antigoni project was part of the Italian Play Production course regularly offered within the upperlevel sequence, which included a conversation course, a grammar review course, and a literature survey. The general goals of Italian Play Production were to introduce students to some relevant aspects of Italian culture, to guide them through the reading and appreciation of Italian literary texts, and to reinforce their linguistic skills through the use of theater. At that time, students were not required to observe a specific course progression within the sequence, and after the completion of the

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language requirement they could take any of the four courses. Consequently, their backgrounds and language skills could vary substantially in each of the four courses of this level. This was in fact the case of the Antigoni project, which comprised eight students: one who had just completed the language requirement and was planning to declare a minor in Italian; three Italian majors who were ina their sixth or seventh semester of Italian; and one who had just returned from a semester of study in Italy; and, finally, four non-foreign language students (majors in business, international relations, Judaic studies, and biology) with disparate linguistic abilities who were mostly interested in the theatrical experience. Two of the Italian majors were international students (Mexico and France) and thus native speakers of Spanish and French, respectively. Finally, two Italian native speakers, the teaching assistant (TA) and a student assistant, participated very actively in the rehearsals and in the final production.29 In welcoming the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of the class, the instructor tailored the Antigoni project to the ample spectrum of interests and academic experiences of the students and designed a series of objectives that addressed different areas of knowledge and of language skills. In particular, since for half of the students in this group the theater course was their first opportunity to be exposed to sophisticated reading and writing activities, she included a writing-intensive component requiring the creation of an original theatrical adaptation. Through the reading and writing activities, class discussions and presentations, and the specific practices of the theatrical workshop, the Antigoni project was meant to lead students to:
further pronunciation and fluency through improvisational activities and rehearsals recognize and practice different linguistic registers, rhetorical devices, and genres develop the ability to understand, summarize, rephrase, translate, and connect complex texts analyze the fictional and non-fictional representations of the events in different genres and media (theater, film, literature, essays, papers) script a coherent and complete play to act out on the stage understand events within their historical and cultural contexts develop intercultural awareness by comparing the Italian experience with that of the North American current political scenario.

The sequenced activities designed for the project consisted of:

reading an array of heterogenous texts (history chapters, theoretical discussions on politics and terrorism, theatrical text, short stories, and essays)

Re-Creating Antigoni establishing a context for such readings exploring historical and literary identities identifying and choosing perspectives role-playing situations debating characters standpoints writing, staging, and acting a full play

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The primary readings, listed below, were all in Italian; however, students read the secondary texts either in English or in Italian, depending on their language proficiency. Working on the readings, the students generated the plot and structure of their own play, rewrote some parts of the texts, created one entire Quadro, or act, and translated and subtitled the whole play for the final production. The course timetable consisted of three weekly contact hours plus a three-hour theater workshop dedicated to improvisation and rehearsal, which intensified during the last month of classes.30 The production took place at the end of the semester in a nonprofessional venue, that is, one of the three skyscrapers in the University of Pennsylvania dorm system. The audience of the play production consisted of about one hundred and fifty spectators: the Italian faculty and students at Penn as well as local Italophiles and members of the Italian and Italian-American communities in Philadelphia. The texts that shaped the narrative of Antigoni were extracts from both the primary and secondary readings used in the course. The primary readings comprised a corpus of works of different genres and media: Marco Balianis 1998 monologue Corpo di Stato, Marco Bellocchios 2003 feature film Buongiorno, notte, an extract from Anna Laura Braghettis and Paola Tavellas 2003 memoir Il prigioniero (The Prisoner), and Alessandro Trigona Occhipintis 1999 play Segue comunicato. The secondary readings included historical information, extracts provided from essays on the Italian context of gli anni di piombo and from the contemporary philosophical reflection on international terrorism: Christopher Duggans essay A Concise History of Italy, Italo Calvinos 1978 Il potente intercambiabile (Interchangeable Power), Le cose mai uscite da quella prigione (The Things That Never Came out of That Prison), and Moro ovvero una tragedia del potere (Moro, or a Tragedy of Power), Pier Paolo Pasolinis 1974 article Cos' questo golpe? Io so (What Is this Coup? I Know) also known as Il romanzo delle stragi, Leonardo Sciascias 1978 essay Laffaire Moro (The Moro Affair), Adriano Sofris 1991 L'ombra di Moro (Moros Shadow), Giovanna Borradoris Terrorism in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with J. Habermas and J. Derrida, and Jean Baudrillards The Spirit of Terrorism. Sophocless Antigone provided the archetypical tragic background for a reflection on

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the conflict between the personal and the political, also in the light of the 2001 international terrorist attack in the United States. The variety of the readings was not only instrumental to provide the students with different perspectives on the controversial historical event known as the Moro Affair, but also to encourage them to question their own ideas about terrorism. Through the understanding of the historical context and of the philosophical discussion on terrorism, they were able to grasp the diversity of the points of view, the ideological nuances, and the factual motivations that triggered terrorist actions and political violence as events grounded in history and cultural contexts. In the transition from the reading of the texts to the writing of the script, a primary objective for the University of Pennsylvania student team involved analyzing different points of view, an activity which unfolded in three progressive steps: (1) comprehension of the context; (2) analysis of literary and cultural elements; and (3) recognizing, understanding, and empathizing with the perspectives of the authors and/or characters. In order to guide the students through this multifold process, the instructor developed specific pedagogical tools, such as pre-reading activities, questionnaires, and role-plays focusing on both cognitive and affective aspects. First of all, students worked on their understanding of Italys history, politics, and social life. From Duggans Concise History, they read the chapter on the Italian Republic, which includes general information on Italy from the Resistance to the 1980s. They focused on gli anni di piombo, with particular emphasis on the Aldo Moro murder case. Subsequently, by reading excerpts from the texts by Habermas, Derrida, and Baudrillard mentioned above, they examined and criticized the current, as well as their own, definitions of terrorism, both in historical and philosophical terms. A questionnaire created by the instructor helped students to problematize the notion of terrorism and to navigate through the readings, which were challenging not only for their philosophical language, but also for the controversial issues that they addressed. The questionnaire concerned, for example, the definitions and historical contexts of partisan war, resistance, and legitimate war, the subtle and intricate distinctions between ideological, ethnic, and religious terrorism, and the unexpected connections between the meanings of the words border, terrorism, and war.31 These questions sparked discussions about the ethical and emotional dilemmas central to most of the course readings and highlighted the role of history, personal experience, and subjectivity in the understanding of political violence and terrorism. Likewise, through the critical analysis of

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the terms discussed in these texts, students realized that meaning is very rarely objective and is often charged with ideology. Furthermore, the philosophical and ethical consistency of these readings prepared the students for the analysis of the core concepts of Sophocless Antigone. Reading the original Antigone constituted a pivot point in the students learning because it bridged strategies usually adopted in literary analysis to the dynamic process of perspective taking, which fully involved the students affective and cognitive spheres. After some typical comprehension activities, such as examining the relationships and conflicts between characters, anticipating their actions and behaviors, and categorizing the masculine and feminine features in their personalities, students switched to a more empathy-oriented and creative approach. First of all, they identified emotions and feelings elicited by the conflict between Antigone and Creon, such as loneliness, guilt, anger, hate, fear, pity, and regret. Then, they read aloud passages of the tragedy working on their tone and pace to express different emotions, and they discussed the impact of such emotions on the development of the tragic conflict. They especially debated how emphasizing certain feelings and other psychological traits contributed to the characterization of Antigone as a subversive female figure with respect to Creons authority vis--vis the authority of Creon. Interestingly, these class discussions alternated in their concern for political versus private matters. For instance, several students wondered why Antigone does not deny her fault in the face of authority thus avoiding being punished; if masculinity in Antigone is depicted as a negative, tyrannical, and therefore as a bad trait, which kind of laws femininity rejects in this tragedy and why; which masculine features the heroine shows and to what end she employs them; and, finally, to what extent one should be loyal to the State. They concluded the analysis of Antigone with a dramatic activity, which required writing a first-person narrative and presenting it to the class in the form of a short monologue. Here is an example of one of the prompts:
Assumendo la prospettiva di Ismene o Emone, scrivi un monologo di 250 parole in reazione alle seguenti domande: Provi pena per Creonte perch inizialmente ha cercato di fare il bene e poi stato travolto dalle circostanze, o credi che sia un uomo autoritario che ha ricevuto ci che merita? Perch? E Antigone? Quali sentimenti provi per lei? Piet? Comprensione? Qualcosaltro? Spiega. Il monologo deve: - esprimere chiaramente un sentimento (rabbia, piet, odio, paura, amore, rimorso, etc.), - spiegare almeno due ragioni del comportamento di Antigone e Creonte,

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Chapter Thirteen - essere sessuato, cio deve riflettere il sesso del personaggio con cui ti identifichi, Ismene o Emone, - tenere conto del contesto della tragedia e non trasportare Antigone e Creonte nel presente! Presenterai il tuo monologo alla classe. Taking on the perspective of Ismene or Haemon, write a 250-word monologue reacting to the following questions: Do you pity Creon because initially he tried to do good and then he was overcome by circumstances, or do you believe that he is an authoritarian man who got what he deserved? Why? What about Antigone? What feelings do you have for her? Pity? Understanding? Something else? Explain. The monologue should: - clearly express one feeling (anger, pity, hate, fear, love, regret, etc.), - explain at least two reasons for Antigones and Creons behavior, - be gendered, that is, it needs to reflect your gender, depending on the character you identify with, - take into account the context of the tragedy and not treat Antigone and Creon as if they were living today! You will present your monologue to the class.

The requirements in this drama activity to express one feeling, to explain at least two reasons, to provide a gendered response, and to take into account the context reflect the instructors methodological concern with balancing emotional identification with a motivated and contextualized interpretation of the text. Overall, because of the vibrant connections of the recurring Antigone in Western contemporary culture, the reading and dramatization of the text naturally stimulated students to explore both affective and cognitive dimensions of their interaction with the text. As a result of the empathy approach adopted in the reading, and in spite of Antigones mythical backdrop, the dichotomy between public and private that this tragedy exemplifies helped students to gain deeper insights about the other course readings on political violence and terrorism and it challenged their own ethical and political convictions. In other words, the empathy approach to Antigone prepared students to react constructively to the delicate dilemmas highlighted by Cunningham in the learning of history. The practice of perspective taking was fully developed with the reading of the theatrical monologue Corpo di Stato, the memoir Il prigioniero, and the play Segue comunicato.32 Balianis Corpo di Stato is very rich in detailing the narrators and his companions thoughts and emotions against the background of the social and political turmoil of the 1970s, peaking with the abduction and assassination of Aldo Moro in 1978. As mentioned

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in the previous discussion on the role of empathy in theater, Balianis work presents a continual alternation of empathy and epic modes. Corpo di Stato is exemplary in this regard because the narrator continually switches from identification with the narrated self, that is, the young Marco, and his companions (empathy mode) to critical detachment from them (epic mode). This technique, which aims to increase spectator awareness, also helps to increase their interest for and understanding of historical events. Empathizing with the social actors of the Moro Case, namely, politicians, young radicals, brigatisti (members of the Red Brigades), and Aldo Moro himself, was very helpful for the students grasp of the political nuances. The following activity, extracted from a worksheet on Corpo di Stato, is an example of how the students explored and role-played the different and complex perspectives that the monologue highlights on the thorny question of negotiation for the release of Aldo Moro: In Armando (p. 51), Marco riassume le posizioni delle varie parti politiche sul rapimento di Aldo Moro: quelli che sostengono che le BR sono compagni che sbagliano; quelli che pensano che fra le BR ci siano degli infiltrati manovrati dai servizi segreti; quelli che pensano che si debba trattare in ogni modo per ottenere la liberazione di Aldo Moro. Riesci a capire di chi sono le diverse posizioni? In altre parole, che cosa pensavano i democristiani? Che cosa pensavano i comunisti? Che cosa pensavano i gruppi estremisti? Che cosa pensavano i seguaci di Craxi? Dopo aver letto la storia di Armando, fa una breve ricerca e preparati a sostenere diversi punti di vista in un dibattito in classe sullargomento della negoziazione per la liberazione del prigioniero. Nel dibattito, assumerai la posizione di un partito politico che ti verr assegnato dalla professoressa.
In Armando (p. 51) Marco summarizes the positions of the various political sides on the abduction of Moro: those who argue that the BR are comrades who are making a mistake; those who think that there are some agents infiltrated from the secret services among the BR; those who think that they should negotiate in order to obtain the liberation of Moro in any possible way. Can you understand to whom the various positions belong? In other words, what did the Christian Democrats think? What did the extremist groups think? What did Craxis followers think? After reading Armandos story, do some research and get ready to support different points of view in a class debate on negotiating the prisoners release. In the debate, you will assume the position of a political party that your professor will assign to you.

Employing reading and role-play activities such as those described above, in order to understand the historical context of the play, also had the effect of expanding students general and specialized vocabulary. The

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following extract from a worksheet on Segue comunicato includes important information and vocabulary on the sheltering in France of Italian women and men charged with accusations of terrorism. Students memorized the vocabulary and used such information in their role-plays:
Nella lettura di questa parte del testo, ricorda queste informazioni: Negli anni 70 la Francia ha accolto i terroristi italiani in fuga e non ne ha permesso lestradizione in Italia. Molti di loro vivono ancora l e sono stati condannati in contumacia (= in assenza). Il dramma si svolge in unalternanza di passato e presente. In the reading of this part of the text, keep in mind this information: In the 1970s France welcomed the Italian terrorist refugees and has not allowed their deportation to Italy. Many of them still live there and they have been tried and sentenced in absentia. The drama takes place in an alternation of past and present.

The empathy approach trained students not only to value emotions as much as reasoning, but also to focus on such elements as purpose and audience in their analysis and dramatization of the texts. The reading comprehension activities on Segue comunicato, for instance, culminated in a role-play that posed great emphasis on self-defense and accusation as specific purposes and on the police as a concrete audience:
Paolo e Cecilia confrontano la morte del padre di Paolo con quella di altri uomini uccisi negli anni 70 dal terrorismo. Cecilia sostiene che le due situazioni sono molto diverse, mentre Paolo vede parecchie analogie. Preparati a interpretare un monologo di 150 parole per ognuno dei due personaggi, Cecilia o Paolo, da tenere di fronte alla polizia (e davanti alla classe!). Per la parte di Cecilia, dovrai immaginare una confessione da fare alla polizia, in cui Cecilia si difende spiegando le motivazioni, sia razionali che emotive, delle sue azioni. Tieni presente che Cecilia molto combattuta fra il suo credo politico e il senso di colpa per la violenza usata. Per la parte di Paolo, al contrario, dovrai preparare un discorso di accusa contro Cecilia, sempre da fare alla polizia. Ricorda che Paolo molto triste e arrabbiato per la morte del padre e per la scelta di sua madre nella lotta clandestina.

Paolo and Cecilia compare the death of Paolos father with that of other men killed by terrorism in the 1970s. Cecilia claims that the two situations are very different, while Paolo sees many analogies. Be ready to interpret a monologue of 150 words for each character that you will perform in front of the police (and in front of the class!). For Cecilias part, you should imagine a confession to the police, in which you explain the rational and

Re-Creating Antigoni emotional motives for Cecilias actions. Keep in mind that Cecilia is torn between her political beliefs and her sense of guilt for her use of violence. For Paolos part, you should prepare an accusation speech against Cecilia to make to the police as well. Remember that Paolo is very sad and angry about his fathers death and about his mothers choice to go underground.

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By and large, first-person narrative writing and role-playing were unconventional yet very fruitful ways for students to understand the historical events, concepts, and peoples ideas and experiences described in the course readings. These activities also worked as preliminary steps to advance from the reading to the adaptation and final production; however, the actual writing of the play Antigoni took place only after students arranged the mass of information, perspectives, and emotions into a coherent narration and an original interpretation. Therefore, the primary task in the design of the play was to organize the diverse students input around a leading theme or character. Students argued that the figure of Antigone, the tragic epitome of the conflict between the personal and the political, could take such a leading role. They also aimed to create a narrative that was illustrative of some larger, more complex point than that of the depiction of the history of terrorism in Italy in the 1970s. The figure of Antigone could establish a connection with the spectators and raise some important questions, such as: What does the play tell the spectators about the students? Their community? Their generation? The human condition? In addition, they found traces of the recurring Antigone in Diario, or diary, a sort of appendix to Corpo di Stato, in which Baliani recalls Antigones mournful lamentations in order to comment on the creative process of the monologue and on the terrorist actions of the 1970s. In this way, Corpo di Stato also served to establish a conceptual link with the tragic background of Sophocless Antigone and was a great source of inspiration for the students play. The Prologue, Quadro I, and part of Quadro II of the play Antigoni were actually based on Corpo di Stato. Students then scripted some brief but intense monologues from Sofris, Pasolinis, Calvinos, and Sciascias essays and created a few character-narrators who embodied the different authors perspectives and linked the Quadri. The narrators monologues echo the words of Antigone on the concepts of justice, guilt, violence, and death and they project Antigones reflection on the topic of political violence onto the contemporary scene. The Antigoni created by the students at Penn engages the audience in these topics from the beginning and for the whole play. Antigoni is comprised of a prologue, which introduces the audience to the figure of Aldo Moro and to the historical events of the time, and of four Quadri

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pivoting around specific historical and ethical issues: the conflict between duty and sacrifice, the relationship between passion and ideology, the legacy of history on contemporary events, and the problem of political violence in the contemporary world. Each Quadro presents various situations and characters and is introduced by a different female characternarrator inspired by Sophocless Antigone. The Greek heroine herself is also a character in the students play, but remains in the background and appears only three times to comment on the events from a mythical, ahistorical past, while the modern Antigoni articulate their existential and political dilemmas in relatively long monologues. These disquieting women, dressed in jeans and red tee-shirts to symbolize the communist utopia, raise several questions, such as: can one sacrifice her own feelings in the name of politicsor for political reasons? How can one solve the conflict between sense of duty and care? Is there a distinction between the State and the individual who is in charge of it? Or are they both only symbols of power? In the monologues, the Antigoni express their anxieties for the forms of injustice that they see around them, and like the original Antigone, they are convinced of being on the right side. Their projection in the context of gli anni di piombo emphasizes the crucial issue of the time, when for young activistsand there were manychoosing to follow their passions and impulses meant taking on arms and fighting against the State. In other words, it meant becoming a freedom fighter or a terrorist, depending on the perspective from which one considered these options. While she is reflecting on her past as a clandestine fighter, one of the Antigoni characters says:
Cercavamo nuove strade, nuove risposte. Noi pensavamo, noi credevamo di essere nel giusto. Anzi. Noi eravamo buoni, ci sentivamo buoni e volevamo essere buoni. E invece33 We were looking for new avenues, new answers. We thought, we hoped that we were right. Indeed, We were good, we felt good and wanted to be good. And instead

What are these womens answers to the issue of political violence? How do they explain what it meant to be revolutionary during gli anni di piombo? And to what extent do they still feel revolutionary today? The doubts and the questions are shaped as memories, confessions, dreams, and lucid reflections that conjure up the images of people who died for political reasons: Aldo Moro, a partisan from the Italian Resistance during World War II, other young men sentenced to death by the Fascists and

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Nazis during the Republic of Sal, a young man who rejects armed struggle, and an intellectual who denounces the corruption and cruelty of political power. The Antigoni speak to these ghost-like characters and then pose their questions directly to the audience. Interestingly, in the fourth Quadro, that is, the original part entirely written by the students, all the women of the play gather in a contemporary university setting where they discuss the figure of Aldo Moro, his political role, and the reasons for his killing. They argue about individualism and collectivism, and debate the issue of political violence as a means to pursue social justice. The Quadro closes with a coupe de thtre which aims to raise some questions. While the young women are still talking about political violence, an eerie male character, who, as the script says, represents the everyman, appears on the stage and beats one of them fiercely, with violence:
La picchia veramente. Deve farlo per almeno un minuto per dare al pubblico lopportunit di fare qualcosa. La ragazzza prova a difendersi, ma alla fine, cade sul pavimento. Il picchiatore si gira verso le altre ragazze. Picchiatore: Ne volete anche voi? Scuotono la testa. Guarda per molto tempo le donne. Le ragazze hanno paura di lui, ma non si girano. He beats her for real. He needs to do it for at least one minute to give the public the opportunity to do something. She tries to fight back, but eventually she falls on the floor. He looks at the other girls. Beater: Do you want some too? They nod no. He looks at them for a long time. They are scared, but they do not move.

Then, the violent character addresses the audience:

Picchiatore: Vi piaciuto? Vi piace quando qualcuno si fa picchiare? Siamo simili. No. Siamo uguali. Pensate che quello che ho fatto normale. Forse no. Ma avete ascoltato il dilemma di queste donne. Sono studentesse. Giovani. Non hanno vissuto la vita. Non sono terroriste. Sono solamente ragazze con punti di vista diversi, senza esperienza. Sono immature. Un po sciocche, forse. Ma senza importanza. Ho picchiato lei perch potevo farlo. Perch no? Non volevo mica censurarle. Si censurano da sole, non hanno bisogno del mio aiuto. Daltronde questo il regno della censura.

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Chapter Thirteen No, non avevo una vera ragione. O meglio, una ragione ce lavevo: le ho colpite per vedere quello che avreste fatto voi. E voi non avete fatto niente. Avete guardato questazione finale senza muovervi, senza provare a fermarmi. Eccola, la vostra societ. Siete vili. Tutti. Le donne come gli uomini. Senza solidariet, individualisti. Lasciate stare. Morirete presto anche voi. Il picchiatore esce di scena. Did you like that? Does it appeal to you when someone is attacked? We are similar. No. We are equal. You think that my behavior was normal. Perhaps not. But you have listened to the dilemma of these women. They are students. Young ladies. They have not experienced life. They are not terrorists. They are only girls with differing points of view, without experience. They are immature. A bit foolish, perhaps. But unimportant in the grand scale of things. I have hit her because I could. Why not? I did not want to censure these girls. They do that very well themselves, and do not need my help for it. This is the reign of censorship. No, I did not have any real reason for my act. Or rather, my reason was that I hit the girl to see what you would do. And you did nothing. You have watched this final action without moving, without trying to stop me. There it is, your society. You are cowards. All of you. The women like the men. Without an ounce of solidarity, individualistic. Never mind. You will soon die too. The beater leaves the stage.

The monologue of the beater is unsettling. With the mans harsh apostrophe to the audience and the controversial open ending, it was the students intention to prevent a consolatory finale and to raise awareness in the audience about the ethical responsibilities, both personal and collective, as related to the use violence. However, the conclusion also projects this very conflict onto the audience. By eliciting their sense of guilt for passively witnessing the attack, the beater challenges the spectators own perspectives on the issue of violence. In addition, the open ending shows that the tension between the private and public sphere at the core of SophoclesAntigone is not limited to ann historical past. Rather it reverberates on the here and now, or, as Rossanda would say, it is recurring and affecting the present time and private self. Finally, the ending provides an exemplary synthesis of the way in which the University of Pennsylvania students understood the alternation of epic mode and empathy theorized by Brecht and, in the Italian setting, by Baliani. The change of mode unfolds progressively in the ending, and it becomes definitive only when the beater explains to the public that his

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real purpose for attacking the girl was to see what you would do. And you did nothing. At this point, the beater calls the spectators upon the core of the conflict, referring both to the private (you are cowards) and the public dimensions (your society . . . without an ounce of solidarity, individualistic). Finally, this scene forces the audience to shift perspective from that of the spectators, entertained and distant, to that of the beater, with whom they are explicitly asked to identify when he states, with grim tone, We are similar. No. We are equal. The reawakening of the audience in the monologue of the beater powerfully condenses the succession of empathy and epic modes conducted in the Antigoni project. This scene is particularly intense when performed on stage and highlights the students strong emotional involvement as well as their willingness to question the ramifications of political violence in our private lives. All in all, the whole play attests to a high degree of sociopolitical awareness on behalf of the students, showing that the practice of empathy promotes not only affective processes but also cognitive skills. The Penn students drama was so vivid and compelling that Middlebury students adopted it as a script for their Italian theater production the next year.

Staging Antigoni for the community

The Antigoni project at Middlebury College was carried out in 2006, in the setting of the Italian summer school that is renowned for its very selective, full-immersion, and super-intensive language and culture program. The theater course was one of the electives in the Masters program. The objectives of the course, that in the Middlebury summer school was titled Teatri di guerra, or Theaters of War, were close to those designed at Penn with regard to the cultural, literary, and historical content. However, the primary goal of Teatri di guerra was to perfect the oral and aural skills of those students who, although advanced, needed to bring their communicative abilities to a higher level of sophistication during the limited time of the summer immersion. Teatri di guerra was an ideal venue to this end. First of all, it provided students with an actual stage on which they could practice and reinforce their interpersonal communicative skills through improvisation, rehearsals, and mise-en-scne. Likewise, the literary, historical, and political content of Teatri di guerra intellectually challenged students to explore major aspects of Italys past, buttressing their interpretive skills and expanding the breadth of their specialized vocabulary. More importantly, the perspective-taking approach adopted in the course called students to

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embody the cultural and political points of view expressed in the texts, enhancing their mastering of the rhetorical layers of the language. Because of the priorities outlined above and the time restrictions of the summer program, the writing-intensive component developed at Penn was not incorporated in the Middlebury syllabus. For the final play production, Middlebury students used Antigoni, the original adaptation authored by the University of Pennsylvania Italian theater team in 2005. The main preoccupation of the Middlebury group was framing the play in such a way that it did not seem a piece of fiction, but a likely reconstruction of the events that could stimulate discussion and raise political awareness vis-vis the contemporary international scenario. Above all, students were eager to understand and be able to express the feelings and meditations of the protagonists of gli anni di piombo. This was not an easy task. As Cunningham suggests, in order to avoid the risk of overly subjective or eccentric responses to imagined situations, empathy should always be firmly connected to historical evidence.34 To pursue this goal the instructor supplemented the corpus of readings with historical and secondary texts, such as excerpts from Paul Ginsborgs Storia dItalia (History of Italy) and from Carl Schmitts Teoria del partigiano (Theory of the Partisan), among others.35 Students read all the texts exclusively in Italian as required by the language policy of the Middlebury Summer School. Besides the course format and goals, there was an important contextdriven feature to take into account as well. The Italian play, which is produced every year, is the culminating social and cultural event of the Middlebury summer program. It constitutes a central extracurricular activity and a meaningful cultural opportunity for the larger community of learners, teachers, guest speakers, and family members who participate in the production as actors, extras, and staff crew, or simply attend it as spectators. Staging the dilemmas of the Antigoni in the context of gli anni di piombo aimed to spark interest, facilitate understanding, and stimulate the emotional involvement of the heterogeneous Middlebury community in the subject of the play. In addition, by blending literature, history, and politics, the Antigoni play turned the stage into a space of political discussion, through which to critique ideological stances and to involve the audience in a process of coming to awareness. The Middlebury Italian theater group strove to make the production accessible and meaningful to all, even to the less expert members of the community, like elementary and intermediate students. Since the summer school required an Italian-only speaking environment and subtitles could not be used, the team intervened substantially on the paratext in order to

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facilitate the comprehension of the play. They kept the original cover of the playbill changing only the logistical details. However, they incorporated in the playbill historical information and a detailed synopsis with comments and questions about controversial topics. These questions concerned, for example, the issue of the dehumanization of the victims of terrorism, the ideological reasons behind the decision to join the armed struggle, the legacy of the past in the contemporary context, and peoples indifference to everyday violence. The information, questions, and comments included in the playbill were meant to solicit the spectators reflection on the central topics of the play and to question their convictions on terrorism and political violence before the beginning of the play production Antigoni. Finally, the theater team attempted to revive the flavor of the 1970s for that portion of native speakers in the campus community that had actually lived through gli anni di piombo in Italy. To this end, they intervened on the prologue. The original text introduced the figure of Aldo Moro with a symbolic but not much informative exchange. To this suggestive introduction, the Middlebury class added a powerful scene in which a mass of protesting students ran onto the stage with chains, sticks, and Molotov cocktails. When the smoke of the Molotovs dissolved, a sort of documentary on gli anni di piombo began. A few student actors commented on a slide show with images of the student and worker movements, the right-wing bombings of Piazza Fontana, Brescia, and Bologna, several victims of the left-wing guerilla organizations, and, finally, the figure of Aldo Moro, with his abduction and assassination. In the background, several 1970s political songs played. The rest of the text was altered only slightly. The participation in the theatrical endeavor on behalf of the Italian on-campus community was impressive.

Epilogue
In both contexts, the University of Pennsylvania undergraduate curriculum and the Middlebury College graduate school, the Antigoni project was a successful way to experiment with empathy in the study of Italian history through theater. While the two courses differed due to the academic setting, language proficiency, time frame, and purpose of study, their overarching goals converged. The students navigated through the Antigoni project by using empathy as a cultural learning tool, aiming to perfect their interpersonal and interpretive skills and to advance their intercultural understanding from the inside. The sequenced activities designed for the

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project spanned from reading a corpus of heterogeneous texts to contextualizing the readings, engaging in role-playing situations, taking on different perspectives, and writing, staging, and acting out a full play. This approach, for which I have borrowed from history teaching the definition of perspective taking, helped students to abate their psychological barriers to language learning and to develop an original path to understanding, questioning, and reasoning on issues of political violence and terrorism related to the history of Italy from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Furthermore, the adoption of Sophocles Antigone shaped the tragic background of the project and served to interrogate the ethical and political issues at stake. Within this framework adaptation, the two theater teams privileged different aspects of the process. Penn students emphasized the writing portion of the project and authored the original Antigoni adaptation, while Middlebury students centered on the staging of the Antigoni and privileged the contextualization and the interpretive exchanges inside the community. The Antigoni project, finally, had a very exciting epilogue in the spring of 2009 when playwright and actor Marco Baliani and director Maria Maglietta toured several colleges in the United States, staging one of the core texts of the Antigoni project, the theatrical monologue Corpo di Stato.36 Although they hadnt engaged with Balianis text as deeply as the students at Penn or Middlebury had, my students at Dickinson College participated in the performance as enthusiastic and appreciative spectators. Balianis performances, therefore, constituted the conclusion of a longterm pedagogical exploration in the territory of empathy in theater and history and the final stage of my long-term scholarly project on the representation of terrorism in film and theater. All too often, there is no or very little connection between scholars academic pursuits and their teaching subject matter. Yet in different contexts and pedagogical experiments, Antigoni made my scholarly activity come to life in the classroom.

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Appendix A Activity Worksheet on Alessandro Trigona Occhipinti, Segue comunicato (1998-99)

http://www.dramma.it/libreria/copioni/segue_comunicato.htm Informazioni Nella lettura di questa parte del testo, ricorda queste informazioni: Negli anni 70 la Francia ha accolto i terroristi italiani in fuga e non ne ha permesso lestradizione in Italia. Molti di loro vivono ancora l e sono stati condannati in contumacia (= in assenza). Il dramma si volge in unalternanza di passato e presente. Comprensione Scrivi le risposte alle domande 1-4. Preparati a discutere le tue idee in classe. 1. Cecilia dice: Conosco luomo, il suo agire.Cercavo solo di dire quanto sia difficile nella realt distinguere la funzione che luomo ricopre dalluomo stesso. (13) LUomo dice: Dimenticavo che voi non colpite mai luomo, ma il simbolo, la funzione. (44). Contro quale funzione combattono i terroristi? 2. Nel colloquio fra Cecilia e lUomo (19-22), Cecilia spiega il proprio punto di vista sulla lotta rivoluzionaria. Quali sono i suoi obiettivi? Che cosa le risponde lUomo? 3. Nel colloquio fra Amedeo e Cecilia (30-35), i due ricordano il fatto che li ha spinti a prendere le armi per la lotta armata. Qual questo fatto? 4. In molte parti del testo, ma esplicitamente a p. 43-44, lUomo ricorda Aldo Moro, anche se il suo nome non mai citato direttamente. Quali sono le analogie tra la situazione dellUomo e quella di Moro? Scrivile qui sotto:

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LUomo

Aldo Moro

Role-play! 5. Paolo e Cecilia confrontano la morte del padre di Paolo con quella di altri uomini uccisi negli anni 70 dal terrorismo. Cecilia sostiene che le due situazioni sono molto diverse, mentre Paolo vede parecchie analogie. Preparati a interpretare un monologo di 150 parole per ognuno dei due personaggi, Cecilia o Paolo, da tenere di fronte alla polizia (e davanti alla classe!). Per la parte di Cecilia, dovrai immaginare una confessione da fare alla polizia, in cui Cecilia si difende spiegando le motivazioni, sia razionali che emotive, delle sue azioni. Tieni presente che Cecilia molto combattuta fra il suo credo politico e il senso di colpa per la violenza usata. Per la parte di Paolo, al contrario, dovrai preparare un discorso di accusa contro Cecilia, sempre da fare alla polizia. Ricorda che Paolo molto triste e arrabbiato per la morte del padre e per la scelta di sua madre nella lotta clandestina.

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Malina, Judith. Preface. In Bertolt Brecht, Sophocles Antigone, translated by Judith Malina, v-vii. New York: Applause, 1984. MLA Report 2007. Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World. In Profession 2007, 234-245. New York: MLA, 2007. Nussbaum, Martha, Sophocles Antigone: Conflict, vision, and simplification. In The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 51-82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Occhipinti, Alessandro Trigona. Segue comunicato (May 30, 2009), http://www.dramma.it/libreria/copioni/segue_comunicato.htm Occhipinti, Emanuele, ed. Teaching Italian and Italian Culture: CaseStudies from an International Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 14 novembre 1974: Il romanzo delle stragi. Saggi sulla politica e la societ, edited by Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude, Milan: Mondadori, 1999, 362-363. Phillips, June K. Foreign Language Standards and the Contexts of Communication. Language Teaching 41.1 (2008): 93-102. Rossanda, Rossana. Antigone ricorrente. In Sophocles, Antigone, translated by Luisa Biondetti, 12. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1987. Sciascia, Leonardo. Laffaire Moro. Palermo: Sellerio, 1978. Schmitt, Carl. Teoria del partigiano. Milan: Adelphi, 2005. Sofri, Adriano. Lombra di Moro. Palermo: Sellerio, 1991. Stainer, George. Antigones. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century: Including Arabic, Chinese, Classical Languages, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. 3rd ed., rev. Yonkers, NY: National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 2006. Yeager, Elizabeth Anne, and Stuart J. Foster. The Role of Empathy in the Development of Historical Understanding. In Historical Empathy and Perspective Taking in the Social Studies, edited by Ozro Luke Davis, Elizabeth Anne Yeager, and Stuart J. Foster, 13-20. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001.

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Notes
1 2

Phillips, 93. For a definition of cosmopolitan and cosmopolitanism, see Appiah. For an overarching analysis of the role of intercultural communication to respond to the challenges posed by multiculturalism in the contemporary world, see Kim and Hubbard. 3 MLA Report 2007. 4 Koss, 139. 5 Koss, 139. 6 In The French Play, Essif discusses in depth theatrical adaptation and re-creation in the FL. 7 For an overall discussion of the notion of intercultural communication, see Dooley. 8 See Standards, 50. For a more ample discussion of the Standards approach to intercultural understanding, see Carlorosi, Helm, Marini-Maio and McMahon. 9 In Perspective Taking and Historical Thinking: Doing History in a Fifth-Grade Classroom, paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, 1995, Matthew T. Downey was the first to define empathy as perspective taking in the field of history teaching. See Yeager and Foster, 15-19. 10 Jensen, 56. 11 Brecht, Alienation Effect in Chinese Acting, 91-99. With regard to Brechts alienation effect and its use in foreign language theater, see Matthias in this book, 69-71. 12 Brecht, cited in Koss, 152. 13 Brecht, cited in Koss, 152. 14 See 1997 Nobel winner playwright and actor Dario Fos interpretation of teatro epico (epic theater) in Fabulazzo, 126. Marco Baliani, author and actor of Corpo di Stato, elaborates on the succession of epic theater and empathy in Ho cavalcato in groppa ad una sedia, 29-30. 15 Interview with Marco Baliani and Maria Maglietta, in Baliani, Body of State. Balianis discussion on empathy and epic mode in theater is also part of the introduction to Body of State. 16 Baliani, Ho calvalcato, 29-30. 17 Counsell, 2. 18 Counsell, 2. 19 Counsell, 2. 20 Standards, 286. 21 Standards, 216. 22 See Cunningham, 24-29. 23 Rossanda, 12. Translation NMM. 24 For a comprehensive illustration of the philosophical, esthetic, and theatrical interpretations of Antigone from antiquity to 1984, see Steiner, Antigones. The critical studies and texts which were most relevant for my theatrical experiments

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on Antigone were: Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 1217-18; Brecht, Sophocles Antigone; Anouilh, Antigone; and Nussbaum, Sophocles Antigone: Conflict, vision, and simplification. 25 Malina, vii. 26 Contesting Jacques Lacans psychoanalytical interpretation of Antigone, Luce Irigaray was the first to propose a feminist reading of the Greek heroine grounded in the notion of diffrence. Nussbaum, Butler, and Cavarero further developed the feminist perspective. 27 See Brezzi, 11. 28 Similar readings of the figure of Antigone in relation to terrorism and political violence are frequent in contexts other than Italy as well. See, for instance, the German feature film Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn). The film was the intellectuals reaction to the events of 1977 which involved the left-wing extremist group Red Army Faction who kidnapped and murdered German official Hanns Martin Schleyer. Three people of the RAF were arrested and died in prison. The film foreshadows their treatment as scapegoats for Schleyers death and appeals explicitly to the figure of Antigone as a symbolic rebel to the laws of the State. 29 I would like to take this opportunity to thank wholeheartedly the TA, Silvia Carlorosi, and Eleonora Raspi, a native-speaker student assistant, who collaborated on the staging of Antigoni. Both were extremely generous in offering their time and energy to help the students in rehearsals, stage production, lighting, and subtitling. They also participated in the final production in a brief, but intense role (Eleonora) and as extras (both). 30 In this course, I followed the time structure, organization, and progression of the theatrical workshop I have described in detail in the essay Full-Scale Play Production, 241-44. 31 Here is a short excerpt from the original questionnaire. It was created both in English and in Italian to support work of the less advanced students: Why does Habermas argue that terrorism is a retrospective designation (62)? Habermas compares and contrasts partisans with terrorists. What are the analogies, in his opinion? What are the differences? Habermas makes a distinction between three different kinds of terrorism: what are they? What are the differences between these three kinds? (62-63) Derrida challenges the distinction between terrorism and war and explores the relationship of political violence with power (112-115, 164-66). What is, in Derridas opinion, the primary objective of terrorist action? Is the number of victims important in terrorist action? Why? (116) In Derridas opinion, the experience of terrorism is a trauma. How can one overcome this trauma? The page numbers here refer to the Italian edition of Borradoris book. 32 Corpo di Stato is a piece of narrative theater which elaborates on the emotional and ideological reasons which triggered the outburst of political violence in Italy in the 1970s. Il prigioniero is a memoir of the life of Anna Laura Braghetti, former member of the Brigate Rosse at the time of the Moro Affair and co-author of the book. Segue comunicato stages the conflict between a young man and his mother, a former brigatista, or member of the Red Brigades, now sheltered in France. In the

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reading of these texts as well, beside typical comprehension strategies, students employed the empathy approach, including first-person narrative writing and roleplaying. 33 This part of the students script includes several passages from A.T. Occhipintis Segue comunicato. 34 See Cunningham. 35 The readings also included Dario Fos La tragedia di Aldo Moro, the collection Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza italiana, and several short stories from Italo Calvinos Ultimo viene il Corvo. 36 Marco Baliani and Maria Magliettas tour in North American universities took place in April 2009 thanks to the coordinated efforts of the author and colleagues from Wesleyan University, Indiana University, Northwestern University, Middlebury College, Yale University, and New York University. The tour received the support of the Italian Cultural Institutes of Chicago and Washington. I would like to thank wholeheartedly Marco and Maria and all those who made this extraordinary event possible. The tour was also the occasion for the author to translate Balianis work into English together with Ellen Nerenberg, Wesleyan University, and Tom Simpson, Northwestern University.