Emanuele Martorana

Emanuele Martorana is an actor, writer, director, storyteller and teacher. He was born in Palermo in 1976. As well as graduating from the Ecole des Clowns in Rome, at the Accademia Internazionale di Teatro, under the tutelage of Silvia Marcotullio and Emmanuel Gallot Lavalée at the Circo a Vapore, he studied storytelling with international artists such as, amongst others, Michael Harvey and David Ambrose. He pays particular attention to techniques for analysing texts, revisiting the subject with Glauco Mauri, Roberto Sturno and Fiammetta Bianconi. With the ICRA Project, directed by Michele Monetta and Lina Salvatore, he devoted himself to in-depth study of physical mime and the Commedia dell’arte.

Following his meeting with the president and director of the Istituto Teatrale Europeo, Maria Giovanna Rosati Hansen (with whom he studied and learnt the Hansen® method), a close pedagogical and artistic collaboration began, leading to his appointment to her teaching staff. In parallel, he embarked on an artistic journey that took him to the stage in productions of works by Luigi Pirandello, William Shakespeare and Pedro Calderón de la Barca at theatres in Rome, London and Naples.

He is a national trainer in reading aloud for the Italian Library Association and, in 2016, became a member of the board of directors of the Palermo Academy of Integrated Psychology and founded Appi Teatro, becoming its director.

Since January 2022, he has been the artistic director and head of education at the Palco Narrante association, immediately founding παν teatro, a new artistic venture dedicated primarily to the stage and featuring a resident company made up entirely of his students. The company quickly established itself not only on the Palermo arts scene but also staged its own productions outside the region, with over 40 performances held across Umbria, Sicily, Lazio and Basilicata.

Since the early 2000s, he has led courses and workshops at various venues and in various cities across Italy, also collaborating with other associations, state and private schools, theatres, institutions and cultural centres. For several years, at the request of the University of Palermo, he has been leading specialised training courses on theatre-related subjects, contributing to the promotion and teaching objectives of the ‘Terza Missione’ project. From the end of 2025, he began a collaboration with the Alessandro Scarlatti State Conservatoire in Palermo and staged “Mute mute”, his contemporary prose play with live music conducted by Maestro Onofrio Claudio Gallina.

Among his works is “Tales of Blue Devils”, directed in collaboration with the blues musician Umberto Porcaro, with whom he took part in the 12th European Theatre Festival, forging partnerships with theatre companies from England, Germany, Poland, India and France. Notable in his journey to enrich his theatrical language is his collaboration on and participation in the production “La cène” by the French artist Olivier de Sagazan. In 2024, he joined Societas, directed by Romeo Castellucci, with whom – based on a text by Racine and featuring Isabelle Huppert – he staged “Bérénice” on a European tour.