Political Theater in Italian Theater | Casa Italiana Zerilli / Marimò

Political Theater in Italian Theater

Teatro Politico
Wed, 03/31/2021 - 5:00pm
Thinking of Leonardo Sciascia on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth
poster

Political Theater in Italian Theater

Laura Caparrotti, Artistic Director, KIT - Kairos Italy Theater

in conversation with

Marco Martinelli, playwright, director, Teatro delle Albe
Davide Enia, playwright, director, actor
Marco Paolini, actor, director, author
Giorgina Pi, author, director, activist

Broadcast on Casa's Facebook Page and website

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary from the birth of Leonardo Sciascia, KIT - Kairos Italy Theater - and Casa Italiana are presenting three events dedicated to political theater: the first, on March 31, will concentrate on political theater in Italian theater; the second, on April 8, will focus on Italian-American theater; the third and final event will take place in Fall 2021 and will feature political short plays from around the world.

During the first event, Laura Caparrotti will talk with some of today's most prominent theater-makers in Italy who are focused on bringing social and political issues to the stage. The guests will be:

Marco Martinelli, playwright and director, who founded the Teatro delle Albe (1983) with Ermanna Montanari, that has become one of the most respected contemporary Italian theater companies. Martinelli has been awarded numerous prizes including: five Ubu Prizes; the Drammaturgia In/Finita Prize; the Hystrio Prize; the Golden Laurel-international Festival Mess; and the Prize for Career Achievement- international festival Journées théâtrales de Carthage. His texts have been published and staged in Italy, France (selected by the European projects on contemporary playwriting Face à Face and Fabulamundi), Belgium, Germany, Romania, Slovakia, Chile, Brazil and the United States (translated in English by Thomas Simpson).

Davide Enia was born in 1974 in Palermo, Italy. He has written, directed, and performed plays for the stage and for radio. Enia has been honored with the Ubu Prize, the Tondelli Award, and the ETI Award, Italy’s three most prestigious theater prizes. He lives and cooks in Rome.

Marco Paolini is an Italian stage actor, theater director, dramaturg, and author. In the 1970s, he moved to Treviso and started working in theater. Paolini's repertory includes civil theater. His performances usually consist of monologues with frequent use of the Venetian language, irony, and satire. Inspired by Dario Fo, he is an Italian exponent of narrative theatre. Until 1994, Paolini worked with various theater groups, including Teatro degli Stracci, Studio 900 in Treviso, Tag Teatro of Mestre in Venice and Laboratorio Teatro Settimo. In 1995, he received the Ubu Prize for writing Il racconto del Vajont (translated: The Vajont Tale), which dealt with the disaster of the Vajont Dam in Italy. The ceremony aired on Rai 2 Italian television. Since 1999, he has produced his own works with his company JoleFilm.

Giorgina Pi is an artist born and raised in Rome where she obtained a degree in Arts, music and entertainment. She specialized in Paris with a thesis on the Shakespearian performances at the Théâtre du Soleil. She is the author of several essays and papers. As a PhD student in Comparative studies at the Universities of L’Aquila and Paris 8 she is currently concentrating on contemporary rewritings of Greek myths penned by women. She is a stage director, an activist, a videomaker, a feminist and a member of the Angelo Mai artistic collective – an independent space available to artistic activities in Rome (it obtained the Franco Quadri award in 2016). With the Bluemotion theatre group she stages shows and designs sets, carrying out a research which unites stage arts, visual research and live music. In recent years she has co-curated “Not ordinary, not safe” a project on the texts of the great playwright Caryl Churchill from which were born shows and radio dramas. She is the first in Italy to stage the texts of the revolutionary artist Kae Tempest.

In ITALIAN with ENGLISH subtitles.