Piersandra Di Matteo

Piersandra Di Matteo is a performing arts scholar, dramaturg and curator. She is the artistic director of the Short Theatre Festival in Rome (2021—24). She is also a member of the group research projects INCOMMON and SSH! Sound Studies Hub at IUAV University in Venice, where she teaches curation in performing arts, and was appointed curator of the Multidisciplinary Residency 2024 of the Académie of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Her interests range from the post-dramatic theatre to the politics of the voice and listening, and from the practice of curatorship to accessibility.

Thanks to her research findings she has been invited to attend conferences and hold seminars at leading research centres and universities that include the School of Creative Media in Hong Kong, the LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam, the Italian Academy at New York’s Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the São Paulo International Theatre Festival (MITsp). In 2017 she was a visiting scholar at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC) at New York’s City University.

Piersandra Di Matteo has for many years been Romeo Castellucci’s closest theoretical collaborator and dramaturg, working with him at theatres, opera houses and major festivals, including the Festival d’Avignon, the Ruhrtriennale, La Monnaie and Bozar in Brussels, the Schaubühne Berlin, the Vienna Festwochen, the Paris Opéra, the Hamburg State Opera, the Opéra de Lyon, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. She was also the artistic curator of the Atlas of Transitions Biennale in Bologna (2017—20) for Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione (ERT). Her recent publications include A bocca chiusa. Effetti di ventriloquio e scena contemporanea (2024), performance + curatela (ed., 2021) and In fiamme. La performance nello spazio delle lotte (1967—1979) (with A. Sacchi and I. Caleo, 2021).