Meeting with Marco De Marinis and Marco Martinelli

With Don Quixote, Cervantes invents the modern prototype (together with the coeval and not too dissimilar Hamlet) of the glorious defeat, that is, of the hero who somehow triumphs precisely in and over defeat. Because – despite his abjuration on his deathbed – he remains faithful to ideals (or perhaps illusions, dreams) that reality denies but which appear indispensable to him in order to remain human. In a nutshell, he is ‘constant’, like Calderón’s slightly later prince.

And today, in front of the ruins of the West, what has become of Don Quixote and his precious madness?


Marco De Marinis was a professor of Theatre Disciplines at the University of Bologna, where he directed “La Soffitta” Theater Center from 2004 to 2017. In 1999, he founded the journal “Culture Teatrali”, now at number 31. He has taught at numerous foreign universities. He is a member of the scientific team of ISTA, International School of Theatre Anthropology, directed by Eugenio Barba. Many of his books and articles are translated into major languages. Recent published works include: Etienne Decroux and His Theatre Laboratory, Icarus/Routledge, 2015; Ripensare il Novecento teatrale. Paesaggi e spaesamenti, Bulzoni, 2018; Per una politica della performance, Editoria & Spettacolo, 2020; Grotowski. Il superamento della rappresentazione, Editoria & Spettacolo, 2023.

Marco Martinelli, playwright and director, founder together with Ermanna Montanari of Le Albe/Ravenna Teatro, has received numerous awards, including seven Ubu Prizes, Premio Hystrio, Golden Laurel’ in Sarajevo, “Lifetime Achievement Award” Journées théâtrales de Carthage. His plays are published and staged in ten languages and selected by the Fabulamundi and Italian and American Playwrights Project. In 1991, he founded the non-scuola, narrated by Martinelli in Aristofane a Scampia (Ponte alle Grazie), published in France by Actes Sud, which won the Prize of the National Association of French Critics as ‘Best book on theatre 2021’. In 2018, Editoria e spettacolo published Marco Martinelli. Un drammaturgo corsaro, a monograph by Dolores Pesce. Martinelli made the movies Vita agli arresti di Aung San Suu Kyi (2017), The Sky over Kibera (2019), Er (2020) and fedeli d’Amore (2021), reported in Laura Mariani’s book Il teatro nel cinema, Luca Sossella Editore, 2021. In 2024, he published Lettere a Bernini for Einaudi, and an anthology of his texts edited by Valentina Valentini was published by Marsilio in two volumes.