Sonia Arienta, PhD, is an experimental playwright, director-set designer, and essayst.
Visual and textual dramaturgy, space and place dramaturgy are her core activity in the last years. She adopts different languages, depending on the type of research and the soubject of the work, therefore she indifferently works with texts, installations, drawings, photos, videos.
Her artistic and scientific research is focused on hidden censorship acts, manipulation in mass communication, asymmethrical relations, and power relations. She is interested in hermeneutics cleaning acts through the analysis of the text based on CDA and Discourse Studies, and, most recently on informal logic.
Since from the starting point of her professional activity, she tries to discover our society’s contraddictions, hypocrisies of beahvior or thinking. 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).
She debuts as playwright, in 2005 with Strade/Corridoi, at Teatro Stabile in Genoa, and in the same year was among the finalists at Premio Riccione per il Teatro with Pareti domestiche (free climbing). Others works are Camere d’acqua Khore, la luna di miele di Arianna and Cani di quartiere.
In 2023 her text Gli occhi di Ipazia is staged at Teatro Lirico Sperimentale in Spoleto for the contemporary music composer Giacomo Manzoni (Golden Lyon at Music Biennale).
She is engaged in the project “Drammaturgie Urbane“, a blog about playwriting in urban space, a place for work, research and debate.
Since 2005 she starts the project of urban dramaturgy for urban spaces (OsservAzioni for the Municipality of Milan, Codex, for the dipartment of Milan, Arthena Festival for the Municipality of Verbania). Most recently she is engaged in the participative project of mountain dramaturgy Nidi, nodi. fluidi, curated by Gabi Scardi for six little Municipalities near Monte Rosa, in river Sesia Valley.
She was guest-artist in residence at Archivio-Viafarini 2022 e 2023 with the projects Attraversamenti a tempo determinato (ma ignoto ai più) and Atti di fede (ovvero gli Esercizi di Ignazio– multimedial tragicomedy in many acts; NAHR June Fellow (2022), with the project Vuoti d’erba – dramatical path in four Act/Actions.
She published four books: “Qui m’ascolta o m’uccidi” La rappresentazione della persuasione da Mozart a Puccini, LIM 2020, Urli, mormorii, silenzi. Sociologia della voce nel teatro musicale e nel romanzo dell’Ottocento, Carocci 2015, Opera. Paesaggi visivi, sonori, abitati nel melodramma dell’Ottocento, LIM 2011, Don Giovanni. Le manipolazioni di un testo nell’Europa della Restaurazione, RICORDI-LIM, 2004, short essays for the most important italian opera houses (Teatro alla Scala, Teatro Regio di Torino, Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova and Fondazione Donizetti di Bergamo) and scientific papers (Studi Verdiani, “Musica/Realtà”). She also had lectures in the Università degli Studi di Genova, Accademia di Brera, Université Grenoble-Alpes, Università di Pavia-Distaccamento di Cremona, Istituto di fonologia di Lugano, Accademia Rossiniana, Pesaro, Fondazione Rossini, Pesaro, Museo del Risorgimento di Milano, Museo del Risorgimento di Torino) and she had colllaborations with Italian and Switzerland national broadcasting RSI (“Il ridotto dell’opera” and specials) and RadioTre (“Radiotresuite”, “Momus”, “Qui comincia l’avventura”).
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.