Performing Arts as Storytelling, a Way of Acting and Telling in order to Understand the World In-between Good and Evil

Storytelling is a particular kind of action because it is made up of words. So it seems to bring together the different principles of doing and knowing. I try to approach storytelling to other performing arts, in particular theater, because I think it is a peculiarity of performing arts to hold together mind and body, praxis and theories, and to overcome old categories and fictional opposition between them. Theater is a meeting between actor and spectator with a language made up of signs and symbols, performed by a body-mind. In this sense performing arts are sweeping and advanced fields in which theoretical and philosophical theories can become wider. The roots of theater are the same as those of religion and rituals. Theater was born as a way to represent the conflict between opposite forces and opposite gods, Apollo and Dionysus, as Nietzsche taught. The birth of theater was involved in the relationship between good and evil, as a way to understand and represent them, in order to tell and to act, this kind of cosmic conflict with performances. In this sense I think theater could preserve an ancient, but still actual, way of social innovation. Theater and its forms, tragedy and comedy, and its deep research in active culture, could help storytellers to deeply penetrate the negative aspects of a social concern, in order to represent it, act it and lay the foundation to draw forth the best part of it.