Mimesis praxeos. Variazioni tragiche in Julian Beck e Friedrich Hölderlin

The essay aims to analyze the theoretical proposal of Julian Beck, founder of the Living Theatre, showing how his reflections on theater have many similarities with Friedrich Hölderlin’s philosophy of the tragic. Taking as its historical reference the Living Theatre’s production of Brecht’s version of Antigone, which was based on Hölderlin’s translation, the essay explores a number of theoretical issues: the link, developed by Aristotle and Artaud, between mimesis praxeos and katharsis; the relationship with Greek tragedy and the need to explore the unexpressed areas present in the classical tragic text; the fundamental connection between aesthetics and ethics that Beck places at the center of the theatrical experience and which, in Hölderlin, takes on the features of a philosophy of history in the notion of overcoming of classicism.