Prendersi cura della storia e della memoria come atto politico. Franca Rame tra scena e archivio

Following the suggestions of contemporary thinkers such as Lévinas, Butler, and especially Cavarero, the essay enhances the care with which Franca Rame worked for more than half a century, in and out of theaters, in multiple capacities including at least those of actress, playwright, manager, organizer, archivist, and editor. The multifaceted nature of her work has a unity of inspiration and intention that expresses the feminine, “inclined” focus on care in a line that is anything but passive and domestic. It combines in fact the idea of care with traditionally distant words such as ‘struggle’, or ‘political engagement’, an area to which Rame was always committed, even at great cost. Reviewing various aspects of her work around texts and the stage and for the creation of the extensive Fo-Rame archive (with its early use of digitization), the essay highlights the generative impulse that is perhaps the most important legacy Franca Rame left us. It points to a direction within the difficult and urgent search for a balance between the two logics of archive and repertoire identified by Diana Taylor.