Chapter Teatro e violenza in Moby Dick — Rehearsed di Orson Welles

Abstract

Moby Dick Rehearsed is a magnificent experiment in the style of Orson Welles, whose talent explores in depth the texture of Melville's novel in an attempt to put it on stage. The analysis shows how the play - performed in New York in 1955 - sheds light on Welles's idea of the theater as a laboratory to experiment with the possibilities of this peculiar form of entertainment. The novel's inner violence and theatrical power become evident when Welles stages a rehearsal of Moby Dick by a company of actors used to act in Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1955. The well-known influence of Shakespeare on Melville's novel emerges from the play, which became a book published by Samuel French in 1965 in New York. Its Italian translation by Cristina Viti - Moby Dick. Prove per un dramma in due atti - provides the base for Elio De Capitani's mise en scene of the play in Milan in 2022, under the title of Moby-Dick alla prova.