Sonia Arienta, PhD, is an experimental playwright, director, and essayst.
Her research – applied in the field of performative/visual arts, both as playwright and PhD essayist – concerns the contexts where abuses of power, power relations, asymmethrical relations, hidden censorships, conflicts of interest take place.
Since from the starting point of her professional activity, she tries to discover our society’s contraddictions, hypocrisies of beahvior or thinking, and manipulations at different levels. In the same time, she would like to stimulate in the audience new points of view, unusual perspectives, more awareness, and a critical vision of the reality. It deals with small shifts in the way of thinking, capable of leading to significative changes in our worldview.
She is especially interested in subjects about resistance, critical conditions, conflicts, contradictions related with the functions of places, the space and their socio-economical context.
She is a playwright, border line between performing and visual arts, and she is engaged in project of urban dramaturgies with public and private institutions. She is associée to Lab. Litt&Art, centre Charnière of Grenoble-Alpes University.
Her projects were performed at Teatro Regio di Torino, Teatro Stabile di Genova, Lugano Festival Martha Argerich Project, Teatro Donizetti, AsLiCo, Teatro Campoamor (Oviedo), and early in her carier she has been assistant director in some of the most important opera-houses (Rossini Opera Festival, Covent Garden, La Scala, Arena di Verona, Teatro Bellini Catania, Torre del Lago, Macerata Opera). In 2005 was among the finalists at Premio Riccione per il Teatro with “Pareti domestiche (free climbing)”. She is engaged in the project “Drammaturgie Urbane“, a blog about playwriting in urban space, a place for work, research and debate.
She obtained a Ph.D in “Arts du spectacle” at Grenoble-Alpes University (Litt&Art), a master degree in Italian Litterature (spec. in Musicology) at Università degli Studi di Milano and a degree at Fine Art Academy (Set Design at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan). She teaches musical dramaturgy, at Scuola Civica Claudio Abbado, in Milan.