THE MEMORY OF THE FIRST INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST - Massimiliano Mancini - ETHICA SOCIETAS-Rivista di scienze umane e sociali

Arianna Bonardi portrays Nellie Bly in a theatre of memory, denunciation, and social responsibility

Abstract: Ten Days in a Madhouse brings to the stage the figure of Nellie Bly, a pioneer of investigative journalism, through the intense performance of Arianna Bonardi and the direction of Giorgia Verri. The theatrical language is transformed into a tool of memory, denunciation, and social responsibility. The monologue reconstructs Bly’s experience in the women’s asylum on Blackwell’s Island, highlighting institutional violence, enforced silence, and the use of madness as a mechanism of control, particularly against women. Verri’s essential direction enhances the word and the actress’s body, delivering a narrative free from heroic rhetoric and deeply rooted in the present. Ten Days in a Madhouse thus emerges as a necessary theatrical act, capable of questioning the audience about the fragile boundary between normality and exclusion, the power of institutions, and the political value of testimony, reaffirming theatre as a space of collective conscience and civic engagement.

Keywords: #TenDaysInAMadhouse #NellieBly #AriannaBonardi #GiorgiaVerri #CivicTheatre #SocialTheatre #TheatricalMonologue #HistoricalMemory #InstitutionalViolence #WomenRights #InvestigativeJournalism #TheatreOfDenunciation #SocialResponsibility #ContemporaryTheatre #TeatroDeiContrari #MassimilianoMancini #ethicasocietas #ethicasocietasrivista #scientificjournal #ethicasocietasupli

versione italiana

A Versatile Actress Committed to Social Engagement

Arianna Bonardi is an Italian actress, performer, and creative artist born and based in Rome. With a multicultural background that includes theatre laboratories, acting courses in both Italian and English, and technical workshops (including the Chubbuck and Meisner techniques), Bonardi has developed a dynamic career spanning theatre, cinema, web series, and international television.

In film and television, she has appeared in productions such as Matildà – Con l’accento sulla A, Il Mostro della Cripta, and other web series and independent films, earning recognition including Best Actress awards and prizes for comedic performance and monologue work at Italian digital festivals.

Alongside her stage and screen career, Arianna is also active on the web and social media, with a YouTube channel where she shares content related to acting, her projects, and her artistic passions, as well as social profiles that reflect her versatility as a bilingual performer and digital creative. She is the founder of Back2Broadway, a YouTube project created with her cousin, Roman singer Beatrice Binacci, where they produce musical video performances inspired by Broadway and major theatrical hits, designed to bring the language of musical theatre into the homes of musical lovers and general audiences alike.

In theatre, she has collaborated with several companies, including productions curated by Teatro dei Contrari and directed by Giorgia Verri, highlighting her ability to move between dramatic and comedic registers with strong narrative awareness and stage presence. She has also collaborated for years with Makkekomiko in Rome, under the artistic direction of Alessandro “Mago” Mancini, her mentor and author.

Her artistic activity is marked by a strong commitment to giving voice to meaningful stories through contemporary and cross-media languages, exploring themes such as identity, the right to speak, and the relationship with the audience in an open dialogue that extends beyond the boundaries of the stage.

A Performance to Remember a Great Revolutionary Woman

Nellie Bly (1864–1922) was an American journalist, writer, and pioneer of investigative journalism. Famous for her undercover investigations, she feigned mental illness to expose abuses in psychiatric institutions, contributing to concrete reforms of the system. She was also one of the first female reporters to challenge the gender roles of her time, becoming a symbol of civic courage, truth, and social responsibility in journalism.

At the women’s asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York, Nellie Bly lived alongside patients for ten days, enduring the same humiliations and witnessing systematic violence and abuse. From this experience came Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887), a report that shocked public opinion and led to one of the first major reforms of the American psychiatric system.

Dieci giorni in manicomio brings this story to the stage in the form of a theatrical monologue, entrusted to the intense performance of Arianna Bonardi, who gives voice and body to Nellie Bly, following her journey from voluntary admission to the institution through to her release. The performance traverses the inhumane conditions of the patients, imposed silence, institutional violence, and the transformation of vulnerability into guilt.

This is not a story of madness, but a lucid investigation of power: madness as a label, as a tool of control, as a fate imposed on poor, foreign, or socially inconvenient women. Nellie Bly’s words thus become a political act and a gesture of resistance, capable of cracking the wall of invisibility.

Direction and a Theatre of Social Responsibility

The direction is entrusted to Giorgia Verri, long attentive to social and civic themes. Through her work with the cultural association Teatro dei Contrari, Verri pursues theatrical research that explores the margins, conflicts, and contradictions of contemporary society. In Dieci giorni in manicomio, the direction favours an essential and rigorous language that places the word and the actress’s body at the centre, allowing the testimony and its human value to emerge with force.

Arianna Bonardi, an actress highly active across web, cinema, and theatre, approaches the figure of Nellie Bly with a deep and participatory gaze. Her artistic research has always been linked to the defence of rights, with particular attention to animal rights and the fight against all forms of violence. On stage, she constructs a character far removed from heroic rhetoric, portraying a lucid, determined, and vulnerable woman, capable of transforming listening into action and words into denunciation.

Dieci giorni in manicomio is a performance of memory and responsibility that speaks to the present, questioning the audience about the fragile boundary between normality and madness, the power of institutions, and the value of the voices of those who are excluded. It is a necessary theatre—one that invites us to look at what we too often choose not to see.

The Director of an All-Female Performance

Giorgia Verri is an actress, director, and theatre practitioner born in Rome on September 5, 1986. Her path in the performing arts began during her years at an art high school, where she developed a deep passion for theatre and dramaturgy, immediately orienting her research toward bodily expression and the spoken word. Over the years, Verri expanded her training through professional theatre courses at the Teatro Azione school in Rome and numerous workshops dedicated to acting, movement, Theatre of the Oppressed, and dramatic expression techniques. In 2010, she also obtained a Diploma in Expressive Art Therapy from the European Theatre Institute, enriching her artistic vision with tools that connect theatre, corporeality, and psychophysical well-being.

Since 2013, she has been involved in leading theatre workshops, and since 2018 she has served as Artistic Director of Teatro dei Contrari in Monteverde Vecchio (Rome), a cultural space born from the Armonia dei Contrari Cultural Association and dedicated to producing performances, educational projects, and artistic pathways open to the community.

In her work as a director and performer, she has curated and directed numerous productions in Roman theatres, including performances at Teatro dell’Orologio, Teatro Vascello, Teatro Agorà, and Teatro Lo Spazio. Through Teatro dei Contrari, she promotes participatory and inclusive theatre that opens itself to the community and contemporary languages, experimenting with forms that integrate scene, word, and relationship.

In Dieci giorni in manicomio, Verri signs the direction of the performance interpreted by Arianna Bonardi, reaffirming her artistic commitment to telling stories that address memory, identity, and collective responsibility through an open and socially engaged theatre.