Armando Punzo, winner of a career Golden Lion at the 2023 Theatre Biennial, is a director, dramatist and actor. Since 1988 he has worked at Volterra Prison, where he founded the Compagnia della Fortezza, the first and longest-running theatrical experience in a penitentiary institution, and from 1996 to 2016 he directed the Volterra International Theatre Festival, naming his artistic direction in accordance with the idea of Theatres of the Impossible. In thirty years of working with the Fortezza company, currently made up of about 70 inmate-actors, he has staged more than thirty shows, including Marat-Sade, Los Negros, Los Pecescanos o Hamlice, Santo Genet, Beatitudo and Naturae, many of which, after their debut in prison, were hosted by major Italian festivals and theatres. In parallel, while working to create the first permanent theatre at the prison, he directs international workshops and shows, focusing especially on large urban and installation-performative projects. He has received numerous awards and plaudits, including: the Silver Banner of the Regional Council of Tuscany, 2023; six UBU Awards; the Medal of the President of the Republic; the Seal of the Carlo Bo University of Urbino Studies; the National Association of Theatre Critics’ Prize; the Carmelo Bene Prize of the magazine lo Straniero; the Europa Taormina Arte Prize; the Prize for Contemporary Culture of the Tuscany Region; and others. He is the author of two autobiographical volumes È ai vinti que va il suo amore (Clichy 2013) and Un’ idea più grande di mi. Conversazioni con Rossella Menna (Luca Sossella 2019). His theoretical writings have appeared in major Italian and foreign theatre magazines.
Photo: © Stefano Vaja