Ripensare il teatro di collegio d’età moderna (Roma, secc. XVII-XVIII)

This contribution discusses some critical aspects of the definition ‘college theatre’ as it emerges from the critical literature on the subject, and puts forward some reflections useful for rethinking the practice of the performing arts in the context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Roman colleges (boarding schools). The aim is to highlight the issues that have characterised the historiographic formula ‘college theatre’ by means of a comparison among different institutions, a contextual analysis of the nature and forms of the sources documenting the phenomenon, and its observation over the ‘longue durée’. The main objective is to validate the opportunity to go beyond the idea of college theatre as an essentially pedagogical practice and, on the contrary, to support the need to study the theatrical culture of Roman colleges also in the light of the relationships with Rome’s other production systems of spectacle.