(ANSA) - ROME, MARCH 05 - The now famous and celebrated cellars of the 70s of the Roman neo-avant-garde certainly have a historical antecedent in the experimental research of the Teatro degli Indipendenti, housed in a basement in Via degli Avignonesi, among the remains of the Roman Baths of Septimius Severus.
The spaces were arranged by the futurist architect Virgilio Marchi, to create showrooms and a small theater directed by Anton Giulio Bragaglia, who started the business exactly one hundred years ago, at the beginning of 1923.
Bragaglia staged about 150 shows there until 1936 and, in addition to some praised ballets and musical pantomimes, two unique acts given to him by Pirandello, Apollinaire's ''Le malle di Tiresia'' presented by Marinetti and many texts by Italian names inspired to write for the theater , by Riccardo Bacchellia Achille Campanile, and discoveries of foreigners from Wedekind to Jarryma also O' Neill and Brecht with ''The threepenny opera''.
Born in 1890, then in his early thirties at the time, and died in his eighties in 1960, he went on his way, and with a certain following, speaking of ''eclecticism and avant-garde research'', which ''is inspired by the great theater '', so that in the 1920s those spaces of his were one of the liveliest places in the capital for avant-garde culture, often dictated to simplify futurist.
Meeting place and opportunity for intellectuals to discuss, Bragaglia introduced you to new things both at the theater and with exhibitions, giving space to emerging artists, starting from Depero and Boccioni to arrive at Trombadori, Socrate, Francalancia, Bartolini, Mafai and many others who would give birth to the so-called Scuola Rome, in addition to re-proposing the 'photodynamic' photographic research of his brother Carlo Ludovico,
Such free and intense work led the Casa d'arte and the Theater to continuous financial crises and when the restaurant and etabarin ended up in the sights of fascist moralism on night clubs, to face the losses, Bragaglia undertook a South American tour, entrusting the activities of Via degli Avignonesi to the brother Anton Julius.
But that wasn't enough and shortly after his return, in 1930, it was decided to close, putting everything up for auction.
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