Rehearsing "the South" Sicilian constructs of representation on the stage 1860--1917
Item
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Title
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Rehearsing "the South" Sicilian constructs of representation on the stage 1860--1917
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:61533ad00d77:11639
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identifier
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12214
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Creator
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Capuana, Janice,
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Contributor
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Marvin Carlson
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Theater | Theater history | European studies | Giovanni Verga | Luigi Capuana | Luigi Pirandello | Nino Martoglio | Sicilian Theatre | verismo
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Abstract
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My dissertation examines how theatre in Sicily after the Risorgimento may have contributed to the construction of a Sicilian identity that is considered different and other to that of northern Italy. I analyze the role that Sicilian theatre and the verismo movement played, between 1863 and 1917, in the building of a regional versus national identity through artistic cultural representations. By considering key works from this period, I posit that old and new stereotypes were reaffirmed and developed, and that native artists participated in the othering of their paesani. I also contend that the touring Sicilian acting companies in the early twentieth century, based in improvisation and folk theatre, furthered the perception of the island as exotic and different.;In chapter one, I suggest that the popular play, I mafiusi, was the beginning of the mafioso anti-hero, and of the fetishization of the mafia. I focus on the context of the play and the events around its production and success, and its influence on Sicilian verismo. In chapter two, I look at how verismo, as epitomized by Giovanni Verga's Cavalleria Rusticana, created an industry for the representation of the Sicilian peasant. Using Orientalism as a lens, I argue that the parallel development of the North/South divide and meridionalismo in the new Italian state, at the same time that we see successful representations of the Sicilian in literature and theatre, helped to solidify certain negative and positive stereotypes. I also analyze Capuana's articulation of versimo as it appears in some of his theoretical works and in his play Malia .;In chapter three, I turn to Sicilian dialect theatre and the famous regional actors who inspired Nino Martoglio and Luigi Pirandello to write some of their most famous characters. I argue that Martoglio's L'aria del continente and Pirandello's Liola, while using some of the same stereotypes and tropes found in verismo just a few years earlier, now offered a lighter, gentler, comic Sicilian figure. In addition, I address the performance of these works by the actors Giovanni Grasso and Angelo Musco, and suggest that audiences perceived them as the embodiment of Sicilianness.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Theatre
