Alessandro Fersen (5 December 1911 – 3 October 2001) was a Polish-born Italian dramatist, actor, theater director, author and drama teacher. Born Aleksander Fajrajzen in Łódź to a Jewish family, Fersen he moved to Genoa with his family in 1913. A student under

Giuseppe Rensi Giuseppe Rensi (31 May 1871 in Villafranca di Verona – 14 February 1941 in Genoa) was an Italian philosopher. Early life and education Giuseppe Rensi's father Gaetano was a doctor; his mother was Emilia Wallner, and he also had a sister, Te ...

, in 1934 he graduated in philosophy from the University of Genoa with a thesis later published under the title ''L'Universo come giuoco'' ("The Universe as a game"). Due to the racial laws of 1938 he moved to Paris (where he attended the Collège de France) and then in Eastern Europe.Enrico Lancia, Fabio Melelli. ''Dizionario del cinema italiano. Attori stranieri del nostro cinema''. Gremese, 2006. . Back in Italy in 1943, he participated in the

resistance Resistance may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Comics * Either of two similarly named but otherwise unrelated comic book series, both published by Wildstorm: ** ''Resistance'' (comics), based on the video game of the same title ** ''T ...

in Liguria, in a partisan group linked to the Italian Socialist Party, before working in Switzerland, where he became friends with Emanuele Luzzati and Giorgio Colli."Un maestro in palcoscenico (Alessandro Fersen)", ''Sorgente di vita''. Rai 2. 5 October 2014. He returned to Italy at the end of World War II, and after a period in which he devoted himself to political activity (being a member of the Secretary of the National Liberation Committee of Genoa and Liguria) and journalism (as a collaborator of newspapers ''Il Lavoro'' and ''Corriere del Popolo''), in 1947 he began his activity as a theater director with the drama ''Leah Lebowitz'', a play which he had taken from a

Hasidic Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism (Ashkenazi Hebrew: חסידות ''Ḥăsīdus'', ; originally, "piety"), is a Jewish religious group that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of contem ...

legend; this play started with the artistic collaboration, which will last decades, with Emanuele Luzzati, with whom founded the "Teatro Ebraico" ("Jewish Theatre"), staging dramas written by him such as ''Golem'' (1969), inspired by the Yiddish folklore, or ''Leviathan'' (1974), based on the techniques of mnemodrama. From 1947 Fersen worked for more than a decade for the Teatro Stabile in Genoa, directing adaptations of Shakespeare, Pirandello, Molière, Anouilh, among others. In 1957 he began a career as a drama teacher founding an acting school in Rome, the "Studio di arti sceniche", inspired by the

Stanislavski's system Stanislavski's system is a systematic approach to training actors that the Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski developed in the first half of the twentieth century. His system cultivates what he calls the "art of experiencing" ...

. He was also an author of critical and theoretical essays, aimed at an interdisciplinary theater, and an actor active on stage, on television and in films.

Filmography

References

External links

Alessandro Fersen Foundation
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fersen, Alessandro 1911 births 2001 deaths Actors from Genoa Italian male film actors Italian male stage actors Italian male television actors Polish emigrants to Italy 20th-century Polish Jews Italian dramatists and playwrights Italian theatre directors University of Genoa alumni Jewish partisans Jewish male actors Jewish dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Italian male actors 20th-century Italian dramatists and playwrights