Regulating the Stage: Storms, Wrecks and Lifebelts in the Italian Experience

none2noThe paper analyses how the performing arts are structured and regulated in Italy. The orientation and the trend of the legislation shows an endemic instability due to the prevailing view of permanent emergency generated by a combination of static subsidies and peer evaluations. The ambiguous equilibrium between centralization and delegation on a National and Regional level, as well as the byzantine categorisation of the different administrative structures, ended up generating a slow and inefficient managerial system, on the one hand, and the uncertainty and mistiming of funds, on the other hand. Moreover, the amount of funds devoted to supporting the performing arts organisations has been progressively reduced, while the contradictory mechanisms aimed at establishing their distribution has been strengthened, providing theatres and companies with a clear incentive to overemployment, conservative choices, and managerial rigidity. The analysis of the Italian legislation aimed at supporting the performing art system shows a sequence of many acts clearly generated by financial emergency. Each new act has been aimed at counterbalancing the fragilities generated by the previous act, and has paradoxically generated new emergencies, in a sort of self-weakening sequence whose dominating value has constantly been the search for survival.openSabatini, Francesca; Trimarchi, MicheleSabatini, Francesca; Trimarchi, Michel