Italian women’s theatre, 1930–1960: An anthology of plays

By Intellect Books Ltd

No other anthologies of Italian women dramatists exist than this. This is a first translation into English of four plays unknown to academic and general public. It includes introductions to each playwright, and critical analysis, historical context and performance history of their plays. It could be used in undergraduate/graduate courses on international women writers in translation, Italian literature, or women's theatre. Books about twentieth-century Italian drama seldom discuss plays by women and when they do very little is written about women dramatists before 1960, even in recent studies of contemporary Italian women's theatre. "Italian Women's Theatre, 1930-1960" redresses this imbalance by providing the first English translation of works by Paola Riccora, Anna Bonacci, Clotilde Masci, and Gici Ganzini Granata. Between 1930 and 1960 these women achieved a high degree of popularity and success, and although their names and works are now largely unknown, even among theatre practitioners and academics, these authors set the stage for the next generation of feminist theatre in the 1970s and for the development of contemporary Italian women's theatre as whole.Following a general introduction the book has four sections, each containing an introduction to the playwright - including biographical information - a translation of one of their major dramatic works, a commentary on the play and the play's performance history, and critical analysis of other works. Translations include: "It Must Have Been Giovannino", "The Fantasy Hour", "The Excluded" and "Men Are Always Right".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books Ltd
• Release date: Sep 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781841506081

Book preview

Italian women's theatre,

1930-1960:

An anthology of plays

Translations and critical introductions

by Daniela Cavallaro

First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect,

The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Performance permissions: Anyone wishing to perform any of the plays should contact the heirs to the estates of the playwrights.

Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd

Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright for material used in this book. The author would be pleased to hear from those copyright holders she has been unable to contact.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Series: Playtexts Series

Series editor: Roberta Mock Series

ISSN 1754-0933

Cover designer: Holly Rose

Copy-editor: MPS India

Typesetting: John Teehan

ISBN 978-1-84150-555-8

Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK.

To my three children,

who have long wanted to see

their names in print

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Italian women's playwrights, 1930-1960

Chapter 1: Paola Riccora

It Must Have Been Giovannino

Chapter 2: Anna Bonacci

The Fantasy Hour

Chapter 3: Clotilde Masci

The Excluded

Chapter 4: Gici Ganzini Granata

Men Are Always Right

Works cited

Appendix

Acknowledgments

For their contribution in helping me retrieve biographical information about the authors, published and unpublished plays, theatre programmes, photos, playbills, newspaper reviews, TV and radio recordings, I am indebted to many individuals and institutions in Europe and the United States:

For Chapter 1, on Paola Riccora and Sarà stato Giovannino, I am particularly grateful to Francesco di Marzo and Beatrice di Bello, grandchildren of the writer, for their welcoming and generous sharing (in person in Naples and via email thereafter) of photos, published and unpublished texts, reviews, articles and information; to Ernesto Cilento, of the Archivi Teatro of Naples, for his help in locating and reproducing iconographic material; and to the Gruppo Teatro Tempo of Carugate for allowing me to download from their archives two unpublished plays by Riccora.

For Chapter 2, on Anna Bonacci and L'ora della fantasia, I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Anna Teresa Ossani, Dean of the Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Urbino, for her generous sharing of information and material on Anna Bonacci and her works; to Salvatore D'Urso, custodian of the Bonacci Papers in Falconara, for giving me access to folders of reviews of Bonacci's plays, selected correspondence sent by Albert Verly to Bonacci, photos of the author, and Alan Melville's unpublished adaptation of L'ora della fantasia; to the librarians of the Dallas Public Library, particularly Lisa Lipton, for sending me a copy of The Dazzling Hour owned by José Ferrer, Ferrer’s letter to John Rosenfeld, and information on Rosenfeld himself; to Stephen Ferguson, Curator of Rare Books at Princeton University Library, for directing me to the Ketti Frings Papers at the Wisconsin Historical Society; to the librarians of the Biblioteca Civica Centrale of Turin, particularly Patrizia Bonino, and to Philippe Henin, of France-Soir, for their help in retrieving and scanning images from publications in their archives; and to Fernanda Bastos, of the Biblioteca/Arquivo Teatro Nacional D. Maria II of Lisbon, Francine Delacroix, of the Bibliothèque historique Ville Paris of Paris, Giordano Fenocchio, of the website www. teatrodel900.it, and Marike Schultz- Meyer, of the La Jolla Playhouse, for sending photos, reviews, and programmes from their collections.

For Chapter 3, on Clotilde Masci and Le escluse, I would like to express my thanks to Maricla Boggio, secretary general of the SIAD (Italian Society of Dramatic Authors), for giving me access to the archives of Ridotto, the official publication of the association; to the publishing company Àncora of Milan (and especially to the editor, Matteo Verderio), for giving me access to their publications for educational theatre, particularly Scene femminili, and for scanning covers of their magazines; to Tadek Lewicki, professor at the Faculty of Science of Social Communications at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, for allowing me access to the educational theatre collection in their library; to Roberto Zago, of Gatal Teatro, for sending copies of two plays by Masci archived in their library in Milan; to Morena Medri, of the Biblioteca Comunale F. Trisi of Lugo, for sending me a copy of a play by Masci archived in their library; and again to the librarians of the Biblioteca Civica Centrale of Turin for their help with images from Masci's plays.

For Chapter 4, on Gici Ganzini Granata and Gli uomini hanno sempre ragione, I am especially thankful to Giorgio Trinchero, for sending me a copy of a Ph.D. dissertation, then meeting with me and sharing memories and photos of his first wife Carlotta (Gici) Ganzini; to Ganzini’s sister Signora Wu Paccagnini; to Ganzini’s co-author Claudio Caramaschi for his memories and for forwarding the text of unpublished radio programmes; to Suor Giuseppina Parma, of the Istituto Marcelline in Milan, for information about Ganzini’s early playwriting and publications in the school newsletter; and again to Matteo Verderio of Àncora, Professor Tadek Lewicki of the Pontifical Salesian University, the Gruppo Teatro Tempo, and Roberto Zago of Gatal Teatro.

I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of the Teche RAI, in Rome, that gave me copies of TV and radio broadcasting of plays by Riccora, Masci, and Ganzini Granata; of the theatre section of the SIAE in Rome, for helping me with copyright issues, and for providing me with copies of plays by Masci kept in their archives; and of the staff of the Burcardo Theatre Library in Rome, who welcomed me in my annual visits.

I have received significant support at the University of Auckland as well. At various stages of this work, several postgraduate students helped with the editing and bibliography: Clorinda di Tommaso, Dr Ellen McRae, Dr Gwyn Fox, and Dr Alfio Leotta. Digital media specialist Tim Page has been able to transform faded photos into publishable images. The librarians at the InterLibrary Loan Service of the University of Auckland have been always obliging, especially when helping me retrieve adaptations of L'ora della fantasia from various parts of the world. Associate Professor Bernadette Luciano has offered her valuable feedback on several versions of this work. The University and the Faculty of Arts have provided me with research grants that allowed me to visit several archives and individuals in Italy. To all of them go my sincere thanks.

Finally, Dr Daniel J. Stollenwerk has followed, encouraged, and supported this project from beginning to end. He truly has been my personal miglior fabbro. Mille grazie.

Introduction

Italian women playwrights, 1930-1960

This book celebrates a rich and yet largely unknown history of theatrical production by Italian women between 1930 and 1960, beginning during the fascist era and ending when the recognized pioneers of Italian women's theatre – Natalia Ginzburg, Dacia Maraini and Franca Rame – began their careers.¹ In four sections, I introduce the life and works of four Italian women playwrights who were active and successful well before the explosion of feminist theatre: Paola Riccora (pseudonym of Emilia Vaglio Capriolo, 1884-1976); Anna Bonacci (who also published under the name of Igor Velasco, 1892-1981); Clotilde Masci (who also published under the name of Francesca Sangiorgio, 1918-1985); and Gici Ganzini Granata (pseudonym of Carlotta Ganzini, who also published under the name of G. C. Broom, 1920-1986). This volume provides the first English translation and commentary of a representative play by each of these four playwrights, thus illustrating three decades of Italian women's playwriting and depicting Italian women's lives from the early 1930s to the late 1950s.

Paola Riccora began her theatrical career translating and adapting French vaudevilles, only later writing original works, many of which are still being staged in theatres today. Her most popular was the comedy Sarà stato Giovannino [It must have been Giovannino] (1933), created specifically for the theatre company of Eduardo, Peppino and Titina de Filippo, who would become among the most celebrated personalities of twentieth-century Italian theatre; in fact, Riccora's play was one of their first stage successes outside their native Naples.² In 1938, the comedy was made into a film titled Sono stato io! [It was me!]; Peppino and Eduardo de Filippo again played the leading male roles of the sweet-talking, good-for-nothing nephew, and the clumsy uncle Giovannino, who was considered responsible for every misfortune that happened in the family.

L'ora della fantasia [The fantasy hour] (1944) is undoubtedly the best-known play by Anna Bonacci. Beginning in 1926, Bonacci wrote several stories and theatrical works, but did not meet resounding success until the early 1950s, when the director Mario Camerini made her comedy L'ora della fantasia into the film Moglie per una notte [Wife for a night], and the play itself was staged in France. After the French triumph, Bonacci's comedy was staged around the world, gaining international recognition. In his 1964 film Kiss Me, Stupid the director Billy Wilder adapted to the 1960s American context the plot of L'ora della fantasia, in which a model wife and a prostitute exchange roles for one night.

A prolific writer for the Catholic educational theatre and their all-female and all-male casts, Clotilde Masci obtained her first success on the major stage with the drama Le escluse [The excluded] (1950) which portrays a group of single and widowed women living in a boarding house after the end of the Second World War. Masci continued to write for the stage until the early 1970s, winning several prestigious awards.

Gici Ganzini Granata, finally, is probably best remembered as a writer for children's theatre and of stories for early Italian television children's programmes. Many of her plays staged at the Angelicum theatre in Milan and later broadcast on national television have become favourites of children and parents alike. Beginning in the late 1940s, however, Ganzini Granata had been a popular writer for all-women theatre groups as well. Gli uomini hanno sempre ragione [Men are always right] (1958) stands out among her plays written for Catholic educational theatre for its humorous and surprisingly disenchanted way of representing marriage as an occupation, whose necessary skills can be learned in a special school.

The fact that the names of these once successful playwrights have been largely forgotten should not be surprising. Even when they do attain some level of success in their lifetimes, women playwrights rarely appear in subsequent anthologies and collections of drama, a fact which Katherine E. Kelly defines as the ghost effect (1996: 1-2).³ It is not that women did not write for the theatre, Kelly explains, but that the vast majority of plays by women – particularly those with a major part written for a woman – either failed to be produced or else appeared in theatres that would bring them neither profit nor acclaim (1996: 5). Sharon Wood also concludes that since the few women who attempted to write for theatre were heavily criticised, damned with faint praise and usually swiftly forgotten, it is not hard to see why not many went the playwriting way (2006: 369) or, if they did, why no traces of their works remain.

Yet, while the names of Riccora, Masci, Bonacci and Ganzini Granata do not appear in manuals or anthologies of Italian theatre history, their dramatic production must be considered within the context of both professional and amateur theatre of their times. Paola Riccora, for example, writing both in dialect and in Italian, followed in the tradition of Neapolitan theatre. The influence of Luigi Pirandello, the greatest Italian playwright of the first half of the century, can be detected in her works, as well as in those by Bonacci, who began her playwriting career the year of Pirandello's death. Masci's and Ganzini Granata's early dramatic production, on the other hand, can best be understood in the context of the renewal of the Catholic educational theatre, which coincided with the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the process of democratization of the country. Both playwrights later moved on to write for the professional theatre, constituting a backdrop for those dramatists who are now considered the pioneers of Italian women's theatre. What follows, then, is a short overview of the place of the four playwrights within the context of the Italian theatrical tradition of the first half of the twentieth century.

Paola Riccora and the Neapolitan stage

Plays performed in dialect continued to hold a prominent position on the Italian stage even after the unification of Italy (1861), when in fact it first became possible to talk of an Italian stage at all.⁴ The development of Neapolitan theatre, in particular, deserves attention, as it is in that cultural environment that Paola Riccora – as well as her most famous performers, the de Filippo siblings – built her career.

The second part of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of a reform in Neapolitan theatre, led by the author-actor Eduardo Scarpetta (1853-1925), who moved past the characters and situations of the commedia dell'arte, by creating his own new character of Felice Sciosciammocca, whom Gaetana Marrone defines as the embodiment of petit-bourgeois values (2006: 246). As Donatella Fischer highlights, Scarpetta modified both comic elements in the plot and language to make his theatre more suitable to bourgeois sensibilities. But he also chose the middle class as the protagonists of his own plays, staging their ambitions, vanities, and idiosyncrasies (2007: 3). Moreover, Scarpetta modernized the obsolete stage designs of the past and obtained great success on the Neapolitan stage with adaptation of French vaudevilles (Marrone 2006: 246).⁵

It is in fact with adaptations from the French that Emilia Vaglio Capriolo began her career as a playwright, under the name of Paolo/Paola Riccora. Antonella Ottai explains that Riccora's apprenticeship, following Eduardo Scarpetta's model, taught her how to adjust the life of the Parisian bourgeoisie within the Neapolitan urban landscape, and how she would soften the tenor of the sexual intrigues of the original plays sending most of the time to the dinner table those characters whom the original authors had destined for bedroom delights (2002:100). This experience with adaptation allowed Riccora to develop her plays in a more intimate direction, combining the bourgeois desire for moral decorum with the exigencies of a comic or dramatic plot (Ottai 2002: 100-101).

Paola Riccora’s best-known plays are those she wrote for the Teatro Umoristico, a theatre company made up of Scarpetta's three illegitimate children: Titina (1898-1963), Eduardo (1900-1984) and Peppino (1903-1980) de Filippo. The de Filippo siblings, so well-known that they are often referred to by their first names only, are considered among the main protagonists of the Neapolitan stage in the twentieth century, a time when Naples could be counted among the principal centres of theatrical creativity in Italy and abroad (Marrone 2006: 244).

The plays which Paola Riccora wrote for the de Filippo siblings in fact already show the writer's ability to intertwine comic and dramatic tones, giving the three actors the chance to prove themselves on the national stages. Although the collaboration between Riccora and the de Filippos has been praised especially for Eduardo's interpretation of the role of Giovannino in Sarà stato Giovannino, Ottai highlights the fact that Riccora created a series of female characters strongly ethically connotated for Titina (2002: 102), and that it may in fact have been her dramatic register predisposed toward women that caused the end of her writing for the de Filippos (2002: 103).

Instead of rehearsing the fifth comedy which Riccora had written for them, the de Filippos began collaborating with Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), who at the time of their encounter in the early 1930s had already acquired an international reputation, culminating in the Nobel Prize for literature in 1934. Pirandello's playwriting experience had begun in the early twentieth century with a series of plays in the Sicilian dialect based on his own short stories. In a second phase of playwriting he presented a modified version of the bourgeois drama, staging the social and personal consequences of adultery.⁶ A third period of Pirandello's playwriting is marked by an interest in metatheatrical reflection, beginning with his masterpiece Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore [Six characters in search of an author] (1921). Through the conflicts between actors and characters, audience and stage, Pirandello's later plays often focus on the impossibility of distinguishing between reality and fiction.

Pirandello died in 1936, the year which also marks the end of the collaboration between Riccora and the de Filippos and of the staging and publication of Bonacci’s first play, La casa delle nubili [The house of unmarried women]. While contemporary reviewers did not detect Pirandello's influence on Riccora's plays (see Chapter 1), reviewers of works by Anna Bonacci will often mention Pirandello's dramaturgy when discussing the contrast between appearing and being which returns in most of her works, as well as the impossibility to distinguish between what is true and what is imagined.

Anna Bonacci and the notorious triangle

Bonacci’s first successes in theatre fell during the years of the fascist regime (1922-1945), a period which, in spite of an often paternalistic if not patronizing attitude towards women's intellectual abilities, saw the proliferation of women's writing and cultural production.⁷

Scholars agree that Mussolini's interest in an art form that would represent the ideals and the spirit of fascism seemed more oriented towards cinema than theatre (Antonucci 1986: 112-113; Griffiths 2006: 339). It is true, however, that fascism did support a number of initiatives meant to promote theatre.⁸ Moreover, in a famous speech in 1933 Mussolini advocated the creation of a theatre for the masses, which would express great collective passions, find inspiration in a sense of real and deep humanity, and avoid what he called the notorious love triangle which had been dominating the stage (Antonucci 1986: 113).

The attempts to realize Mussolini's theatrical ideals did not meet with success.⁹ In spite of Mussolini's proposal, in fact, romantic comedy remained the most popular theatrical genre of those years, with the notorious triangle still at its centre (Antonucci 1986: 115; Frese Witt 2001: 24). Bonacci's L'ora della fantasia, a comedy which included not one but two triangles, would also have been considered part of that genre. The ethics of that time, however, called for a positive resolution which confirmed the sanctity of matrimony, after adultery was perhaps dreamed of and maybe even planned, but never actually committed. The most successful example of this comedy style was Aldo De Benedetti's Due dozzine di rose scarlatte [Two dozen red roses] (1936), in which a husband and wife both dream of an extramarital affair with a mysterious stranger, but in the end remain faithful to one another. In fact, the threat of infidelity cements their marriage, which appears stronger at the end of the play than at the beginning.

Dramas and melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s staged adulterous relationships as well. Nevertheless, these plays also confirmed the sanctity of marriage for, either physically or psychologically, the adulterers would somehow suffer the consequences of their sins. In contrast, Anna Bonacci's bold choice of having both spouses commit adultery in L'ora della fantasia, without need of expiation, reveals in the author, according to Paolo Puppa, an eccentric courage which most playwrights of the era lacked (2003: 27).

Topics like adultery and divorce on page, stage or screen were often the target of Church criticism as well. Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical Casti Connubii (1930) denounced how

by writings, by theatrical productions of every kind, by romantic fiction, by amorous and frivolous novels, by cinematographs portraying in vivid scene, in addresses broadcast by radio telephony, in short by all the inventions of modern science, the sanctity of marriage is trampled upon and derided; divorce, adultery, all the basest vices either are extolled or at least are depicted in such colors as to appear to be free of all reproach and infamy.

Fascist censorship of topics such as adultery or divorce, as well as the real derivation of many plots by Hungarian authors, forced several authors to set their plays in Hungary or in other foreign countries, as stories presenting potentially questionable characters or plots could not appear to be taking place in Italy. It may be connected to fascist censorship, then, that Anna Bonacci decided to set in a distant time and place (1850s England) her comedy L'ora della fantasia, which is centred not only on a double adultery, but also provincial small-mindedness, greed, and the corruptibility of government representatives. Ironically, it took some fifty years after its premiere for an Italian director to change the setting to fascist Italy, and the character of the sheriff to a fascist high official (Gizzi 1995).

Clotilde Masci, Gici Ganzini Granata and post-war women's educational theatre

The end of fascism and the process of reconstruction of the country brought about a number of changes in Italian society and culture which affected theatre as well. One of the main characteristics of Italian theatre in the post-war years was the importance of the director, who had absolute control over the choice of actors and plays. However, none of the new generation of directors had much interest in choosing plays by new Italian playwrights, preferring instead to work with theatrical classics, or foreign modern authors (Farrell 2006: 274). While this fact did not hinder the career and popularity of such author-actors as Eduardo de Filippo and Dario Fo, who had their own companies, it may explain the lack of internationally well-known playwrights in Italy in the second half of the twentieth century.

Another lesser-known change which took place in the theatre world in the post-war years was the renewal of all-women educational theatre, the one portion of the dramatic arena in which women were in fact well represented. It is for this little-studied genre that both Clotilde Masci (writing under the pen name Francesca Sangiorgio) and Gici Ganzini Granata began their activity as dramatists.

The all-women theatre was by no means a creation of the twentieth century. It finds its origin in the Middle Ages, when European convents staged plays in which nuns would be the actresses, the audience and often even the authors. The tenth century German abbess Hrosvita von Gandersheim (935-973), who wrote plays in Latin, is often remembered as the first known woman playwright. In fifteenth-century Italy, Antonia Pulci (1452-1501) wrote convent plays based on the lives of the saints and in 1548 the Dominican sister Beatrice del Sera wrote the spiritual comedy Amor di virtù [Love of virtue]. Elissa Weaver mentions other comedies written by nuns in the seventeenth century, even on secular themes, and quotes a document referring to a group of nuns who in the eighteenth century staged a comedy by Goldoni (2002: 1-5).

Although the theatrical groups were not composed exclusively of religious women, the twentieth-century Italian variant of all-women theatre maintained a close connection to the Church. Theatre was considered both an entertaining and educational activity and as such was common in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools, teachers’ training schools, and amateur theatre groups sponsored by the local parish. Catholic educational theatre, however, insisted on single-gender theatre groups. In plays staged by all-women groups, then, girls would also play the male roles.

In 1946, coinciding with the post-war renewal of Italian society, the all-women educational theatre began its own modernization, through the creation of plays with female only roles. The magazine Scene femminili [Women's stages]¹⁰ brought out by the publishing company Àncora, affiliated with the congregation of Figli di Maria Immacolata [Sons of the Immaculate Mary]¹¹ was the main magazine devoted to the publication and diffusion of such plays.¹² Its mission was to modernize single-sex theatre, to present it again as a healthy diversion, especially in villages where, before the advent of television, the parish was still the centre of social life and a meeting place for children, teenagers and families. Involvement with theatre was encouraged, however, not only because it was healthy recreation, but also for its educational goals. Aspiring actresses would receive instruction in technical skills, like diction, demeanour, make up, and costume-making, and both the actresses and the public would be educated from a moral point of view: We are looking for those comedies that are interesting and fun, that teach something good and beautiful to both the actors and the public, without forgetting the world in which we live today, and the ways in which we live (Macchi 1946: 3).

Moreover, in addition to light-hearted, entertaining comedies, the magazine often published plays that would enlighten the minds on practical cases of real life in relationship to the Catholic morals (Panzeri 1949: 52), focusing on topics which may be unexpected in the educational theatre, such as marriage, divorce, single and widowed women, working women, working mothers and single motherhood. By encouraging the discussion of such pressing societal concerns for women both in the plays it published, and in the subsequent comments of authors and readers, Scene femminili allowed female directors, playwrights, performers, spectators and readers a way to express their point of view on the changes in Italian society of the late 1940s and 1950s.

In fact it was Scene femminili which published both Solitudine del cuore [Loneliness of the heart], an all-female version of Clotilde Masci’s drama Le escluse, which highlighted the conditions of women of different ages and social classes in the difficult years after the end of the Second World War, and Ganzini Granata's Gli uomini hanno sempre ragione, which addressed with surprising humour women's attitude towards marriage at the end of the 1950s. Given the era's insistence on a woman as a full-fledged housewife (Saraceno 2003: 9) and the suspicion towards single, independent women (Chianese 1980: 120), it should come as no surprise that both Masci’s Le escluse and Ganzini Granata's Gli uomini hanno sempre ragione are based on the issue of marriage, and that neither of the two plays looks at marriage as a coronation of a dream of love, but rather as a way for a woman to find her place in society.

Educational theatre for women constituted for both Masci and Ganzini Granata a springboard for their careers as playwrights, which successfully progressed into the 1960s and 1970s. Masci’s later plays continued to stage female protagonists as widows, separated or single mothers, as mothers of handicapped children, or abused young women. Ganzini Granata, on the other hand, moved towards children's theatre, not only restoring traditional plots, but also creating contemporary stories which would attract children and impress adults at the same time.

In the fourteen years of its existence, Scene femminili published more than one hundred women-centred and women-authored plays, which explored relationships among women, be they family members, friends, schoolmates or co-workers. By the end of the 1950s, when the magazine stopped its publication, single-sex educational theatre seemed to have lost its importance, both because television programming was beginning to occupy young people’s leisure time, and because separation of male and female performers no longer seemed necessary, not even on the Catholic stage.¹³ It is interesting, however, that all-women theatre would find new life and new meaning in 1973, when Dacia Maraini, with Maricla Boggio, Edith Bruck, Annabella Cerliani and others established in Rome the all-women's group La Maddalena, which again staged relationships among women, together with other topics of concern such as women's emancipation and liberation in the family, the workforce and society in general, motherhood, abortion (legalized in Italy only in 1978) and violence against women.¹⁴

A note on translation

After decades of neglect, translating for theatre has received much attention, with a number of recent scholarly publications.¹⁵ Different from translators of other literary works, Susan Bassnett explains, a translator of a theatrical work has not only the concern of what she defines the eternal problem of 'faithfulness', but also the added job of negotiating between the translated text and its possible performance (1998:96). The term performability, Bassnett observes, has been not only used as a criterion to judge the work of a translator, or to proclaim the better quality of one translation over another, but also as a way to allow a translator greater liberties with the text, all to reach the end goal of a supposed better result on stage (1998: 96). However, as a performance could be directed to different audiences, at different times, through different media (Bassnett quotes her own experience of translating Pirandello for the radio), the performability of a translation would necessarily vary according to the situation.

Not all translations of theatre texts, however, are meant for performance, as many are conceived for reading. Raquel Merino explains that in reading editions, a translation is presented mostly as literature with prefaces, introduction and critical studies (2000: 359) and tends to maintain a closer relationship with the source text, author, and context (2000: 363). Acting editions, on the other hand, are often published after they have been performed, and presented as adaptations more than translations, with the translator's name at times having prominence over the author (2000: 359-360).

My aim, in translating the works of Riccora, Bonacci, Masci and Ganzini Granata, is to make them accessible to those who would otherwise be unable to read them in the original language, as well as to help restore the popularity which the four playwrights enjoyed during their lifetime. This anthology clearly falls into the category of reading edition, as these translations have not been used in performance. In my translation I focus not on notions of performability, but rather the transmission to English-language readers of the gradations of formality in dialogue, that is, the subtle way in which variations in the Italian language convey different registers in terms of relationship, power, social class, age, as well as the way language was used to suggest the evolution of the main characters.

Although envisioned for readers, nevertheless, my hope is that this anthology may create interest not only in scholars, but also in theatre practitioners, who may want to use these translations as a starting point for future performances. My wish is that this work will be the foundation for a process of rediscovery and restaging of the female dramatic tradition which existed in Italy before the 1970s and the inception of feminist theatre.

Notes

1. In a recent article on Ginzburg's plays, Cinzia Samà, who mentions Ginzburg and Maraini as pioneers (2009: 51) who opened the way and influenced later authors, such as Lella Costa or Cristina Comencini (2009: 64), marvels at the fact that a rich and yet unknown production of plays by women actually exists (2009: 52). Natalia Ginzburg’s plays have been translated by Wendell Ricketts under the title The Wrong Door (2008). Four plays by Dacia Maraini in English translation are collected in Only Prostitutes Marry in May edited by Rhoda Helfman Kaufman (1994). Plays by Franca Rame (co-written with Dario Fo) are available in English in the collection A Woman Alone and Other Plays (1991) and in Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo (1998). Her comedy Sex? Thanks, Don't Mind if I Do! is contained in a volume of essays edited by Walter Valeri (2000).

2. Unless otherwise specified, all translations are mine.

3. Introductions to twentieth-century Italian drama – for example, Taviani (1995) and Taffon (2005) – seldom discuss plays by women. Neither do plays by women appear in the anthology of Italian plays in English translation from the first half of the twentieth century edited by House and Attisani (1995). Very little is found about women dramatists before 1960 even in recent studies of con temporary Italian women's theatre. Italian women's studies specialists such as Sharon Wood (2006) and Áine O'Healy (2000) find almost no name to mention for the decades between 1930 and 1960, as the plays of the few Italian women dramatists of those years were infrequently published or critically discussed (O'Healy 2000: 254). Italian women dramatists active before the 1960s found no space in recent international studies either. In her guide to international women playwrights, She Also Wrote Plays (2001), for example, Susan Croft lists only Maraini and Rame for Italian women's theatre. Again, Dacia Maraini is the only Italian represented in the anthology Plays by Mediterranean Women