L’ecfrasi performata
Silvia De Min
The rhetorical category of ékphrasis was defned by the ancients as the use of language to imagine a scene.
On the contrary, in the modern sense, ékphrasis is defned as the description of a visual art object. This article takes in consideration the role of ékphrasis in contemporary theatre. Ékphrasisin performance is the possibility of temporalizing a vision, through the shared gaze of the audience. This article analyzes two diferent kind of performed ékphrasis: the frst one reproduces visual content through a narrative oral performance (executed by Luca Scarlini about Carpaccio’s painting Le cortigiane and Tiziano’s last painting Pietà); the second one reproduces visual content through a particular use of the image (Anagoor’s multimedial creation about Artemisia Gentileschi). These are just a few example of a broader research on ékphrasis in contemporary theatre.