On prisons and theatres : santo stefano and san carlo
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Law Text Culture
Volume 14 Law’s Theatrical Presence Article 15
2010
On Prisons and Theatres: Santo Stefano and San
Carlo
Patricia Branco
Centro de Estudos Sociais, University of Coimbra, Portugal
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Recommended Citation
Branco, Patricia, On Prisons and Theatres: Santo Stefano and San Carlo, Law Text Culture, 14, 2010,
277-285.
Available at:http://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol14/iss1/15
On Prisons and Theatres: Santo Stefano and San Carlo
Abstract
The interconnection between law and theatre can be seen as having both specular and spectacular functions,
in which space acts as a manifestation of power to shape the place or stage where law and theatre come to life
and perform their spectacle. To explore this link I will use the example of the eighteenth century prison at
Santo Stefano Island in Italy. The curiosity regarding this building arises from the fact that its architectural plan
may have been copied from that of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples. Bentham’s Panopticon was published
between the date of construction of the theatre and that of the prison. While the two buildings span the
publication of the Panopticon, they also mirror each other in the panoptical direction of their gaze. I will
explore these mutual influences and inversions.
This journal article is available in Law Text Culture: http://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol14/iss1/15
Law Text Culture Vol 14 20100000 277
On Prisons and Theatres:
Santo Stefano and San Carlo
Patrícia Branco1
They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each
actor is alone, perfectly individualised and constantly visible. (Foucault
1975: 233)
The interconnection between law and theatre can be seen as having
both specular and spectacular functions, in which space acts as a
manifestation of power to shape the place or stage where law and theatre
come to life and perform their spectacle. To explore this link I will use
the example of the eighteenth century prison at Santo Stefano Island
in Italy. The curiosity regarding this building arises from the fact that
its architectural plan may have been copied from that of the San Carlo
Theatre in Naples. Bentham’s Panopticon was published between the
date of construction of the theatre and that of the prison. While the
two buildings span the publication of the Panopticon, they also mirror
each other in the panoptical direction of their gaze. I will explore these
mutual influences and inversions.
On Prisons and Courthouses
The space where law is administered is always the result of the dominant
conceptions of law, justice, sovereignty and state, thus influencing
the architectural programs of courts or prisons (Mulcahy 2008). As a
result, the first move will be the demarcation of a space where rules are
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Branco
defined, goals are set, and actors are established (Garapon 1997). This
means that to be effective jurisdiction has to be inscribed, apparent
and available to spatial dissemination (Goodrich 2008: 214). Hence,
the architecture of these spaces assigns legal discourse to a proper place
and supports the theatrical dimension of the hearing or disciplinary
program. Thus, buildings and rituals define a landscape through which
people materially experience judicial authority (McNamara 2004;
Lucien 2010).
Courthouse architecture (notably in Europe) has evolved as a
response to different needs: from the Roman Forum to the medieval
tree of justice — as painted by Hieronymus Bosch in The Table of the
Mortal Sins (c 1485)2 — and court itinerancy (the hearings were held
at the residence where the king settled). We then had courthouses
installed in markets and taverns and church halls (in Europe and other
parts of the world, like the US or Australia) (Jacob 1994, Garapon
1997, McNamara 2004). But as process and proceedings became more
complex, courthouse architecture changed in order to accommodate
these new procedures. As the Temples of Law appeared, law and
justice became distant from everyday life because these new buildings
projected the idea of an authoritative, powerful and sacred law which
citizens learned to fear more than respect.
Prisons as purpose-built structures were not common until the
late seventeenth century and the prison as a sanction was not thought
of until philosophers (like Beccaria) started debating sanctions, their
functions and rationale, along with types of crime and the penalties that
would best serve the purposes of sentencing. It was only with modernity
that punishment started to be equated with the deprivation of liberty.
Prior to that, people were incarcerated as a form of prevention, but
physical punishment, including the death penalty as spectacle, forced
labour or deportation were common ways of dealing with ‘criminals’.
At the height of the Enlightenment Jeremy Bentham and his
brother Samuel, an engineer, arrived at a ‘solution’ that they called a
Panopticon (‘an all-encompassing view’) that would revolutionise the
world and minimise the costs of controlling a large number of people:
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On Prisons and Theatres
and ‘all by a simple idea in Architecture!’ (Bentham 1787). The major
effect of the Panopticon is to induce in the prisoner an awareness of an
omniscient and permanent state of visibility which assures the automatic
functioning of power, and involving only a small number of controllers.
This power dresses itself in the architecture of its spaces; in Foucault’s
words, ‘space is fundamental in any exercise of power’ and, thus, ‘stones
can make people docile and knowable’ (Foucault 1995: 178). The birth
of the prison, as the most civilised sort of punishment or discipline,
acts to dress up a new mode of justice (Foucault 1975). The prisons
are constructed to permit hierarchical observation: with the controlees
subjected to visibility and thus control at all times.
Panopticism, as Molinaro (1996) claims, strategically enforces
the epistemological difference between visibility and invisibility,
secures the network of power relations, and expands it into an
increasingly efficient mechanism. The same happens in theatre, where
the organising principle involves both engaging and disengaging the
audience’s behaviour even though this may be done in an unreflexive
or unconscious manner. This means that power flows dramaturgically
from a process of mystification; a mystification that exists through
control over what is seen, heard and experienced (Asma 1997).
Il Carcere di Santo Stefano
Immagina di vedere un vastissimo teatro scoperto …3 (Settembrini
2005: 39)
Santo Stefano (700 x 500 metres) is an island in the Pontine Archipelago
(together with Ponza, Palamarola, Zannone, Gavi and, closest to it,
Ventotene). It belongs administratively to the Italian region of Lazio
and, as reported in Roman chronicles, has a history of confinement
and turbulence. From the first century BCE, women belonging to the
imperial family were sent there in exile including, for example, Giulia,
the daughter of Augustus, and Octavia, Nero’s wife. The absence of
fresh water and the roughness of its territory added to its inaccessibility,
making it a suitable place to settle prison colonies.
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Branco
Figure 1 Prison on Santo Stefano Island Photograph by Giancarlo
Giupponi (copyright) PhotovideoGG. Reproduced with permission
During the eighteenth century the Bourbon Kings of Naples
proposed the idea of building a prison on the island. King Ferdinand
IV was very interested in and supportive of the Enlightenment
ideals concerning penology and the rehabilitation of delinquents.
The latter would be accomplished by removing delinquents from the
contaminated society they were in and placing them in distant and
‘clean’ environments. In 1793 the King commissioned the architects
Winspeare and Carpi to construct a gaol on Santo Stefano (Parente
1998; Pepe 1999).
The prison was inaugurated on 26 September 1795 and was built
by prisoners. It was finished in 1797 and remained active until 1965.
During its lifetime there were several periods of intense tumult when
large numbers of inmates were housed there, for example, during the
Neapolitan Revolution of 1799 and during the fascist period when
many of Mussolini’s opponents were sent there. One of its more famous
inmates was Sandro Pertini, who was incarcerated there from 1929
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On Prisons and Theatres
until 1931 and later became President of the Italian Republic during
the 1980s (Parente 1998: 90). Today, unfortunately, this unique piece
of architecture is falling apart. The following is a description of its
structure and design.
The prison is built in the shape of a horseshoe and consists of three
floors which differentiated the prisoners into categories: ground floor,
bad behaviour; first floor, good behaviour; second floor, the ill. Each
floor had 33 cells, making a total of 99 cells, each of which measured
4.20 x 4.50 metres. Although originally designed to hold 200 prisoners,
at various times almost a thousand men have been imprisoned there,
which meant cells had to be divided to increase capacity (Parente 1998).
Although it was built on an island, the windows were positioned so
that prisoners had no possibility of seeing the sea. They were able to
see only a morsel of the sky above, the interior of the prison, and the
omnipresent hexagonal-shaped chapel at the centre of the complex
(Pepe 1999).
Every inmate was closely monitored, either by the ‘eye of the Law’
(the surveillance guards, representatives of the law of the State who,
given its configuration, would have the whole area covered) or by the
‘eye of God’ (represented by the chapel in the centre of the yard).
The three floors resemble the balconies of a theatre, but in reverse: in
place of the stage — but separated for security reasons from the rest
of the structure by a drawbridge and a ditch — there were the guards’
quarters (including those for the commanders, priests and medical
doctors), administration offices and a hospital. Instead of balconies
or box seats there were cells; and then there were the actors — the
prisoners. And yet, these last were also, and foremost, spectators —
because of the horseshoe shape everything that happened inside the
prison could be heard and seen. The performative repetition of each
physical punishment, of each mess and of each mass, was heard or
seen and served its purpose: to constrain, to observe, to discipline.
The act of watching and being watched played a decisive role in this
theatre-like Panopticon.
Authors who have studied the prison speculate about the possible
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Branco
origins of its design plan. There are three plausible hypotheses. First,
the prison’s architects may have been aware of Bentham’s ideas, since the
Panopticon was published ten years before the design was commissioned,
but there is no documented connection with it (Parente 1998: 103).
A second alternative is that Carpi and Winspeare may have
employed the model of the teatro all’italiana, a type of Italian theatrical
architecture that started to be very common during and after the
Renaissance period. Egginton asserts that Italy was the origin of
many aspects of the theatre we recognise today and that this form
of Italian Renaissance theatre traces its origin to two influences: the
development of perspective in the early part of the fifteenth century
and the rediscovery of Vitruvius’ Architecture (Egginton 2003: 87).
Hence, the main characteristics were: (1) the typical rectangular shape
became horseshoe-shaped which allowed a better view of the spectacle;
and (2) the greater depth of the stage allowed the use of the innovative
perspective wings and the opportunity for the actor to play in front of
as well as behind the proscenium.
The third possibility is that the construction plan of this prison was a
copy of the plan of one of the oldest opera theatres in Europe, the Reale
Teatro di San Carlo, designed by the architects Medrano and Carasale
and built in Naples in 1737. This suggestion is entirely plausible since
there is an almost perfect correspondence between the two plans, their
difference lying in the number of floors: the San Carlo Theatre has
five floors (Parente 1998: 104). Schiano di Collela4, an archaeologist
who has studied the Santo Stefano complex and works there as a tour
guide, claims that ‘the horseshoe configuration and the proportions
are exactly the same’ (2006).
Carpi and Winspeare, conscious of the benefits of the theatre’s
improved sight lines, may have incorporated them into the prison
architecture (Parente 1998: 105). That is why Settembrini, who was a
prisoner there during the nineteenth century, describes the prison by
proposing that one imagine a vast uncovered theatre. It is possible to
do this by comparing Figures 1 and 2.
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On Prisons and Theatres
Figure 2 Giovanni Antonio Medrano 1735 Plan of the San Carlo Theatre
Naples. Reproduced with permission of the Soprintendenza Speciale per il
Polo Museale Napoletano
The juxtaposition is remarkable, whether by a mere coincidence or
whether the architects copied the San Carlo design. In comparing the
two side by side, the line of sight may be inverted, as in a mirror. In the
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Branco
San Carlo Theatre the audience (box seats) observes the centre (stage);
in Santo Stefano Prison the audience (prisoners) is observed from the
centre (surveillance guards). It is possible to claim that the spectacle,
in Santo Stefano, was played on a different stage: the prison, a tactical
and strategically conceived space where the prisoners performed the
dual role of actors and spectators.
The prison building at Santo Stefano island can thus be seen
as a good illustration of Bentham’s ideas regarding the panoptical
architecture, a kind of architecture where, as Foucault has shown, space
serves the purpose of inflicting the power of law over the prisoners and
where each and all are both actors and spectators in the spectacle of
oppression that involves them all.
Notes
1 I wish to acknowledge the comments made by Richard Mohr, Marett
Leiboff, Sophie Nield and Valerio Nitrato Izzo. I also want to thank
Adelaide Mazzarella and Giancarlo Giupponi for their assistance in
obtaining the images used here.
2 Please see http://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/online-gallery/
on-line-gallery/obra/table-of-the-mortal-sins/ (September 2010).
3 Imagine you are seeing a vast uncovered theatre … (my translation)
4 My interest regarding this prison comes from a summer trip there in 2008,
when I had the chance of visiting the islands of Ventotene and Santo Stefano
and listening to the enthusiasm of Salvatore Schiano di Collela as he showed
us photos and copies of the original plans by Carpi. The statement in this
text was taken from a newspaper, Corriere della Sera, from 2006, a news
item called Ispirato alla teoria del Panopticon. É a ferro di cavallo: poche guardie
controllavano tutto. Per due secoli ha ospitato I detenuti politici, è chiuso dal 1965
in http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2006/settembre/17/ Bresci_Pertini_
salvo_carcere_teatro_co_9_060917013.shtml (March 2010).
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On Prisons and Theatres
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