The workshop “Shakespeare and Law”, run in collaboration with the Law Department “Cesare Beccaria” and Puntozero’s director Giuseppe Scutellà and Lisa Mazoni, at Milan’s Juvenile Detention Centre “Cesare Beccaria”, involved a group of twenty-one university students from the Departments of Literatures and Languages, and of Law, along with two young men serving their time in a community centre and seven young professional actors from Puntozero. The workshop with young offenders and young people on probation aims at awakening students from the University of Milan and other participants to the issues of justice, detention, and punishment. It brings the group to read the Shakespearean play with a multidisciplinary approach, and helps the participants to recognise and to bring out their own skills (artistic, communicative, organising, etc.) in order to improve the collective project. Ultimately, it guides the group towards the creation of a theatrical event (playwriting, conceiving scenography and costumes, backstage shooting, etc.) and its promotion (contacts with the media, and the social networks).
The workshop participants met during the month of November 2024 at the Theatre Puntozero Beccaria, part of the juvenile detention centre “Cesare Beccaria” in Milan. There, they were guided in a critical reading of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by director Giuseppe Scutellà, dramaturg Maggie Rose, professor of British Theatre Mariacristina Cavecchi, and by law scholars (Dr. Enrica Valente Sardina; Proff. Letizia Mancini, Luigi Cominelli, and Lucio Camaldo). The group questioned and discussed themes such as justice and law, simulating the procedure of a real-life trial in Italy in 2024. In particular, they re-imagined the Shakespearean character of Puck as a modern teenager who is put on trial because he drugged the other characters through the juice of a flower. The results of the workshop were presented during a Prison Shakespeare conference on 29 and 30 November 2024 at the University of Milan. Students had a unique experience of working with a group of young offenders and youth on probation; they increased their knowledge about life in a juvenile prison and its rules. They also learnt to discredit several stereotypes about “young criminals”.
