Together with his wife Franca, Franco Basaglia was the main driving force behind the reform that led to the closure of psychiatric hospitals in Italy starting in the 1970s. This transformation — which philosopher Norberto Bobbio called “the only truly successful revolution in Italy” — forms the foundation of this contribution to the PEA conference, which this year focuses on the theme of power. In this context, power is particularly relevant in relation to how we understand freedom, care, and well-being.​​

The arts — and theater in particular — can serve as powerful means of expression and communication for what is repressed, which might otherwise become a source of unproductive, destructive conflict. Through art, such forces can be redirected toward the construction of possible worlds. In this sense, we recall the political action suggested by another of the invited speakers at PEA, artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, who spoke to us of a political path for the arts, which he calls “demopractice” (PEA "polis", 2023).

The exhibition The Light Within the Shadow is a contribution leading up to World Mental Health Day on October 10, 2025. In Merano, beginning with the Teatro a Casa Basaglia project, the day will be marked by the event OUT RAUS FUORI, a convivial gathering at Casa Basaglia. The morning features a roundtable with organizations and individuals engaged in mental health and human rights, followed by a procession into the city, where the program continues with music, theater, and presentations. Among these are the two parts of the production OZ: In the Emerald City and The Inhabitants of the Emerald City.

The event’s key image features the Inhabitants of the Emerald City, who, once outside its walls, appear dressed in white — clothed in light, in other words, in all colors. Each person sees the color they perceive through their own lenses. In The Wizard of Oz, anyone entering the Emerald City must wear special glasses, or risk being blinded — only to later discover that it is the glasses themselves that make the city appear green.

At Casa Basaglia, In the Emerald City was created from a workshop on physical contact — a difficult subject in both medical contexts and society in general. Non-spectators are led blindfolded by hand into the “city,” where they listen to the inhabitants’ stories through headphones. These recorded voices are accompanied by the guiding hands of the non-actors. At the end, the blindfold is removed, and the non-spectator receives applause from those same hands — the hands that guided them through the City.

The day is organized in the spirit of Marco Cavallo, a large blue horse made of wood and papier-mâché, created in 1973 in a theater workshop led by Giuliano Scabia, together with patients, artists, and staff of the San Giovanni psychiatric hospital in Trieste. The sculpture has become a symbol of the de-institutionalization of psychiatric care in Italy — a movement that led to the closure or downsizing of many psychiatric hospitals throughout the country.

Giuliano Scabia, who passed away in 2021, was a guest of Teatro Pratiko and Nazario Zambaldi in 2008 during the Theater and Madness events, and later curated the project The Light Within at the Teatro Metastasio in Prato, the Tuscany State Theater, which hosted performances by Teatro Basaglia.

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Nicola Morandini’s photographs document the theater workshop at Casa Basaglia, the performance La Torre (Seasons) at the Prince's Castle of Merano, and Scandalo! in the streets of Merano. The workshop is the moment in which, through bodies, movements, and voices, the imagination opens up — an imagination that is later shaped into poetic language through actions, performances, and full productions.

Performed alongside OZ in various festivals and locations — including Pergine Spettacolo Aperto in the former psychiatric hospital, Castel Roncolo in Bolzano as part of the CRATere festival, the MAMbo (Museum of Modern Art of Bologna), during the La Soffitta season organized by the Department of Music and Performing Arts at the University of Bologna, and the Metastasio Theater in Prato — La Torre creates visual tableaux inspired by the short poems Hölderlin wrote during the thirty-seven years he spent in isolation in the carpenter Zimmermann’s tower in Tübingen. These poems are primarily dedicated to the changing seasons, observed from the window where the poet would sit and watch the world go by.

Performed for Asfaltart, Merano’s street theater festival, Scandalo! is a collective action. With a large papier-mâché nose, the performers walk in balance along a chalk-drawn line through the streets of the city. At various “stations,” they create a moment of interruption — a stumble — for passersby. The word scandalo (scandal) comes from the Greek skándalon, meaning “stumbling block” — something that forces you to pause, to shift your gaze, to change rhythm, to change your life.

Among other performances are NO (a Story of Wall Street), inspired by Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, in which the protagonist repeatedly responds, “I would prefer not to”; and The Apocalypse of the Animals (or The Banquet of the Righteous), in which actors and actresses wear animal heads, removing them one by one to reveal their inner selves.

Other actions aim to raise awareness around mental health as a social urgency — beyond isolation. For example, Help!, in which performers appeared at a psychiatric conference on physical restraint wearing straitjackets, standing silently behind the speakers and facing the audience until they freed themselves to the notes of the Beatles’ Help!; or Se mi lasci non vale ("If You Leave Me, It’s Not Fair"), performed in a nightclub, where Julio Iglesias’ song becomes a metaphor for transformation — from the solitude of the first few moments to a shared joy, as people overcome shyness, begin to dance, and form pairs until everyone joins in.

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Pictured: the key image of World Mental Health Day in Merano.​