I gesti dell'attore

The actor’s body language was undoubtedly a fundamental component of Roman theatrical performances: of this non-verbal dimension of the performance, however, the Latin scenic texts only give us episodic and fragmentary traces, which are joined by some testimonies that have emerged from different types of textual and iconographic sources. This article proposes some strategies for reading these traces, starting especially from those glimmers of understanding given to us by some comic and tragic passages on the gestures, postures and bodily behaviour of Roman actors.