Carmelo Bene (Campi Salentina 1937 - Rome 2002) made his stage debut at Rome's Teatro delle Arti in 1959 with Caligula, by Albert Camus. The show was a resounding critical success and rumours began to circulate that a new enfant terrible had broken onto the contemporary theatre scene.

Bene pursued his intense programme of research into experimental theatre throughout the 1960s in various venues across Rome, frequently at offbeat locations such as the Teatro Laboratorio, Beat 72 - a milestone in Rome's underground scene - and the Teatro Carmelo Bene. The first in a long series of variations on Hamlet (from Shakespeare and Laforgue) date from this period, as well as his adaptations of Pinocchio from Collodi and Salomè from Wilde.

Alberto Arbasino, Ennio Flaiano, Elsa Morante and Pier Paolo Pasolini were among the first to perceive that Bene had forged a new concept of the stage in his experimental, seemingly provocative productions. Adherence to the original text, deference to the author, submission to the accepted rules of directing and dramaturgy - all these were seen as instruments of power to which Bene opposed his will to "subtract from the stage" the undisputed champions of classical theatre, literature and poetry. His scenarios were therefore intended more as "critical actions" akin to Antonin Artaud and Oscar Wilde.

From 1968 to 1973 Bene abandoned the stage and devoted himself to filmmaking, completing a total of five films. Nostra Signora dei Turchi, the screen adaptation of his first novel published in 1966, won the Special Jury Prize at the 1968 Venice Film Festival. In 1973 he began to explore television as a medium, recording Bene! Quattro diversi modi di morire in versi for RAI in 1974. This was followed by a number of other productions for television such as Otello and Lorenzaccio, which was released posthumously.

Following his debut in Paris with S.A.D.E. and Romeo & Giulietta in 1976, Bene's theatre received further critical endorsement. Among others, Pierre Klossowski and Gilles Deleuze regarded his theatre as the enactment of a philosophical vision derived from great thinkers such as Schopenhauer - Bene's dearest philosopher -, Stirner, Nietzsche, Freud and Lacan.

From 1979 Bene embarked on his season of 'concert-shows', which was inaugurated by the Byron-Schumann Manfred. His 'recitals' with Eduardo De Filippo, the Canti Orfici by Dino Campana, the poetry of Hölderlin and Leopardi, were just some of the major stage happenings that celebrated Bene's profound ties with music - phonè understood to convey the essence of his linguistic expression. Sylvano Bussotti, Vittorio Gelmetti, Gaetano Giani Luporini and Luigi Zito were among the musicians to perform alongside Bene in his concert-shows, a dramatic formula that in fact dated back to the first edition of the Spettacolo Majakovskij of 1961, when there had been a live performance of music composed by Bussotti. During the 1980s Bene worked prevalently for opera productions and large-scale public events, such as the memorable Lectura Dantis from the Torre degli Asinelli in 1981, to mark the first anniversary of the terrorist bombings in Bologna. These were the years in which Bene experimented with "amplified electronic instruments". Microphones, mixers, equalisers, Bxs, aphexes and harmonizers joined forces with the lighting, costumes and sets to form the so-called "acting machine", the means through which "the spectator understands that it is the Machine which props up the director". 

At the end of January 1988 Bene was nominated director of the theatre section of the Venice Biennale.

After an absence of almost four years, in 1994 Bene returned to the stage with Hamlet Suite. In 1995 he published his Opera Omnia with Bompiani, in which he gathered his entire theatrical and literary production. His poem 'L Mal de' fiori, winner of the Schlesinger Prize in 2000, stands as his final work, conceived for performance that goes beyond "the oral death of the written word". Carmelo Bene died in Rome on March 16th 2002.