Biography

An International Theatre Artist

Vanda Monaco is an actor, director, writer, dramaturg, and essayist whose work moves between theatre, philosophy, voice, science, and human emotions. Born in Naples and based in Stockholm, she has built an international artistic life across Sweden, Italy, and the United States.

Her work moves freely between classical drama, avant garde performance, spoken theatre, and interdisciplinary collaborations that connect art with medicine, neuroscience, and philosophy.

Early Life and Artistic Beginnings

Her artistic journey began early through music and dance. Raised in Naples and educated at the French school, she studied classical piano and dance before moving to Rome in search of a larger artistic life.

In Rome she began acting with the acclaimed Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté while studying drama at Sapienza University of Rome.

At the same time, Monaco developed a deep academic interest in theatre, opera, and the relationship between performance and the human condition. Her research explored theatre not only as art, but also as a way of understanding identity, memory, emotion, and human experience.

She published essays and books on Italian theatre, opera, and the work of Jerzy Grotowski. Her work critically examined theatrical methods based on physical and psychological endurance. She later earned a PhD and became Associate Professor of Acting and Drama at several Italian universities.

Leaving Academia and Italy

Despite a successful academic career, Monaco chose to leave both academia and Italy itself.

What appeared to many as stability felt limiting to her. She wanted to continue searching, moving, and transforming. That decision became one of the defining turning points of her life.

Together with her husband, philosopher, logician, and mathematician Dag Westerståhl, she moved north to Sweden and continued building an international theatre practice while living and working in countries including the United States, China, and Brazil.

A Wandering Actress

Monaco has often described herself as a wandering artist.

She never followed the traditional path of formal theatre schools in Italy, Sweden, or the United States. Instead, her work emerged through encounters, travel, languages, collaborations, and constant transformation.

Her artistic life has been shaped by movement rather than destination.

She performs both classical and contemporary theatre in Italian and Swedish, moving freely between Shakespeare, Strindberg, experimental theatre, and contemporary dramaturgy.

Her roles have ranged from Shakespearean queens to male characters, outsiders, historical figures, and psychologically complex human beings. Among the figures she has portrayed are Don Giovanni, Strindberg, Giambattista Marino, Pulcinella, Pasolini, Panurge, Giacinta Pezzana, and Nanna Triumphant.

Sweden and Bergman’s Circle

In Sweden she was mentored by Erland Josephson and Gunnel Lindblom, two of Ingmar Bergman’s closest artistic collaborators.

During this period she founded Tensta TeaterEnsemble, Sweden’s first multi ethnic theatre ensemble, which she directed for eight years. There she staged works by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Euripides while exploring theatre as a meeting place between cultures, languages, and identities.

In 2005 she founded the Monaco Acca company together with critic and director Fabio Acca. Their work explored the intersection between theatrical tradition, contemporary visual culture, and experimental dramaturgy.

Voice, Emotion, and the Actor

Language, dramatic text, and voice remain central to Monaco’s artistic work.

She sees the actor not as someone who performs emotions, but as someone who allows emotion to become physically alive through voice and presence.

One of the most important influences on her artistic development came through the voice teacher Kristin Linklater in New York.

As Monaco explains:

“It was Kristin Linklater who made me feel emotions, feelings, and passions as the life of the flesh. The body that creates, loves, hates, blasphemes. The body creates the spirit, creates art, creates religion.”

Voice training continues to be an essential part of her artistic process, and she still studies at the Kristin Linklater Voice Centre in New York.

Monaco has also described the fragile process of creating a character:

“If I give a voice too early to the character I am creating, I lose it and it will not come back to me.”

Theatre Without Borders

Monaco’s artistic life reflects a tradition once embodied by travelling Italian actresses who moved across Europe and the Americas performing in languages often unknown to their audiences, yet communicating through emotional truth, rhythm, gesture, and presence.

Her work belongs to this lineage of actors who cross borders not only geographically, but emotionally and culturally.

For Monaco, theatre is not about fixed identity. It is about transformation.

Theatre, Medicine, and Human Relations

Her work later expanded beyond theatre into collaborations connecting performance, science, medicine, and human relationships.

In the United States she co founded Emotion Theatre together with scientist Federica Raia, physician Mario Deng, and playwright and director John Henry Davis.

The project explores the role of emotion in the relationship between doctors and patients in an increasingly technological medical world.

For Emotion Theatre, playwright Craig Lucas wrote The Catherine Wheel, in which Monaco created the role of The Donor. Davis later directed both The Catherine Wheel and Waiting Room in New York and Los Angeles, where Monaco created the role of The Conductor.

Current Work

Today Monaco continues developing projects where theatre intersects with neuroscience, relational medicine, spoken theatre, and technology.

She is currently working on Technology, Spoken Theatre, Emotions in collaboration with Tekniska Museet.

She serves as Artistic Director of the Relational Medicine Foundation in Los Angeles and leads the international project Italy Sweden 2 2 as both performer and director.

In 2013 she directed Stadsteater between Art and Science. Acting in the Neuroscience Era at Stockholm Stadsteater.

Alongside her artistic work, Monaco continues teaching internationally and conducting workshops on voice, acting, and the actor’s relationship to language and emotion.

Academic Career

Earlier in her career Monaco held academic positions as Associate Professor of Acting and Drama at:

• Università Orientale di Napoli

• Università di Bologna

• Università di Ferrara

• Università Suor Orsola Benincasa

She has also been Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Monaco translated the Italian edition of Erland Josephson’s memoirs and is the author of numerous essays, theatre scripts, dramaturgical works, and plays.

Selected Productions and Roles

Her productions and performances include:

• Fuori dal Paradiso

• Erotismo Barocco

• La Nanna

• Tre Corpi di Donna

• Strindberg

• La morte è un punto

• Giobbe

• Pulcinella è un bastardo

• Giacinta Pezzana

• Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Critical Reception

Critics and scholars have frequently described Monaco as an artist in constant transformation.

The theatre scholar Claudio Meldolesi wrote:

“Vanda Monaco transforms her own existence in order to live the many lives of the actor.”

In Dagens Nyheter, critic Ingegärd Waaranperä described her as:

“An Italian actress with a dark and profound voice who made us relive Strindberg’s passion in a way that captivated and deeply moved us.”

And Stefano de Stefano wrote in Corriere della Sera:

“She moves from one theatrical poetics to another, searching for new languages, finding them, using them, then abandoning them again. There is only the necessity of transforming her own subjectivity, of breathing in rhythm with the constantly changing breath of time.”

Beyond the Stage

Outside the theatre, Monaco trains in boxing at Hammarby Boxing Club in Stockholm.

For Monaco, theatre has never been a profession separated from life itself. It is a continual process of movement, transformation, and encounter between actor and audience, voice and silence, body and thought, emotion and language.