Robin Summa, whose full name is actually Robin, Elian, Arturo, Ludovico Summa, was born the 12th of April 1994, in Pithiviers, France, in a French and Italian family. He was raised near Paris, and then moved to the capital city with his family in 2008. He studied music theory, classical guitar, singing and acting in the Conservatoire Mozart of Paris. He did his middle and high school scholarship in very selective Parisian art-specialized public schools (Collège Rognoni, Lycée Racine). He then decided to study Philosophy in the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. After obtaining his Bachelor degree in 2014, he started teaching French Litterature in Ile-de-France high schools, before moving to the Italian antique city of Naples.

 

In the meantime, he asked his father Pierangelo Summa (1947-2015), a well known Italian mask maker, puppeteer and theater director, to pass to him the art of crafting commedia dell'arte italian leather masks, as well as all the theory associated to this unique theatrical style.

 

Since 2018, he fully concentrated his work on Commedia dell'Arte theater mask crafting, and on the teaching of its associated acting techniques. In 2020, he opened a shop in Naples' (Italy) historical center, fully dedicated to theater masks, and published two books (2019, 2022) in Italian on his father's work. His masks are also for sale at the historical Parisian theater bookstore “La librairie théatrale”, in front of the Paris Opéra Comique. He regularly directs masterclasses in the presticious theater school Cours Florent of Paris, that owns a full collection of his masks, used in the daily courses of its mask-specialized teacher Khadija El-Mahdi.

 

He was also recently invited to direct masterclasses in Canada (Conseil de la culture de l'Estrie ; collège Mont Notre-Dame), Norway (Oslo teatersenter, Barataria Teatro), Morocco (Institut national d'arts dramatique et d'animation culturelle, Rabat), and the USA (Casa italiana Frank DiMino and Maison française at Nazareth University, Rochester, NY).

 

He also started giving free workshops for the children of Scampia, in the underprivileged suburbs of Naples, Italy, through Davide Cerullo's charity “L'albero delle Storie”.

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(This text uses extracts from discussing Summa masks, by Corto Indiana. Stockholm, 2024. Free of use)

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