“Dall'altra parte del cancello”. La rappresentazione della nevrosi e della follia nel teatro-canzone di Giorgio Gaber

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the way in which Giorgio Gaber’s ‘teatro-canzone’ interprets the themes of alienation, madness, and personality splitting. These themes, already present in the less ‘committed’ period of the sixties, in comic songs like “Goganga” or already more ‘hallucinatory’ ones like “Com’è bella la città”, never disappear from his artistic horizon, but they reach their most mature realization in the shows of the early seventies, in particular Far finta di essere sani, influenced by Ronald Laing’s theory of the divided self and capable of revealing the potential schizophrenic tension that lies beneath everyday gestures. The study focuses above all on the performative component of the pieces analyzed and on the acting skills of the artist, capable like few others of bringing together the art of song with that of theater. Through the detailed analysis of a limited number of cases, I intend to show how the set of lyrics, music and stage performance collaborate to make these songs particularly accomplished representations of the lability at the border between normality and madness.