Daniela Cavallaro – författare

This book explores an important moment in Italian women’s theatre and cultural history: plays written for all-women casts between 1946 and the mid-1960s, authored for the most part by women and performed exclusively by women. Because they featured only female roles, they concentrated on aspects of specifically women’s experience, be it their spirituality, their future lives as wives and mothers, their present lives as workers or students, or their relationships with friends, sisters and mothers. Most often performed in a Catholic environment, they were meant to both entertain and educate, reflecting the specific issues that both performers and spectators had to confront in the years between the end of the war and the beginning of the economic miracle.Drawing on material never before researched, Educational Theatre for Women in Post-World War II Italy: A Stage of Their Own recovers the life and works of forgotten women playwrights while also discussing the role models that educational theatre offered to the young Italian women coming of age in the post-war years.

This book explores an important moment in Italian women’s theatre and cultural history: plays written for all-women casts between 1946 and the mid-1960s, authored for the most part by women and performed exclusively by women. Because they featured only female roles, they concentrated on aspects of specifically women’s experience, be it their spirituality, their future lives as wives and mothers, their present lives as workers or students, or their relationships with friends, sisters and mothers. Most often performed in a Catholic environment, they were meant to both entertain and educate, reflecting the specific issues that both performers and spectators had to confront in the years between the end of the war and the beginning of the economic miracle.Drawing on material never before researched, Educational Theatre for Women in Post-World War II Italy: A Stage of Their Own recovers the life and works of forgotten women playwrights while also discussing the role models that educational theatre offered to the young Italian women coming of age in the post-war years.

Staging Violence Against Women and Girls brings together three contemporary plays that denounce gendered violence, along with interviews with their creators and the practitioners who have staged them in different national contexts.Little Stitches (London, 2014): consisting of four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raúl Quirós Molina, Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall, this play presents Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) from the points of view of by-standers, anti-FGM/C activists, health professionals, women who perpetuatethe practice and, finally, survivors.‘Kubra’ (Sydney, 2016): written by Dacia Maraini, this short play features a young woman who was subjected to FGM/C as a child and now, years later, brings her case to court in a search for justice. A Trial for Rape (Rome, 2018): adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning 1979 documentary of the same name, this play reveals how judicial procedures and attitudes toward sexual violence tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused.In their interviews, the writers, directors and producers discuss their conception and production of the works collected in Staging Violence Against Women and Girls. The plays and their creators highlight the urgency of raising awareness of these forms of violence and giving voice to survivors.

Staging Violence Against Women and Girls brings together three contemporary plays that denounce gendered violence, along with interviews with their creators and the practitioners who have staged them in different national contexts.Little Stitches (London, 2014): consisting of four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raúl Quirós Molina, Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall, this play presents Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) from the points of view of by-standers, anti-FGM/C activists, health professionals, women who perpetuatethe practice and, finally, survivors.‘Kubra’ (Sydney, 2016): written by Dacia Maraini, this short play features a young woman who was subjected to FGM/C as a child and now, years later, brings her case to court in a search for justice. A Trial for Rape (Rome, 2018): adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning 1979 documentary of the same name, this play reveals how judicial procedures and attitudes toward sexual violence tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused.In their interviews, the writers, directors and producers discuss their conception and production of the works collected in Staging Violence Against Women and Girls. The plays and their creators highlight the urgency of raising awareness of these forms of violence and giving voice to survivors.

Staging Violence Against Women and Girls brings together three contemporary plays that denounce gendered violence, along with interviews with their creators and the practitioners who have staged them in different national contexts.Little Stitches (London, 2014): consisting of four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raúl Quirós Molina, Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall, this play presents Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) from the points of view of by-standers, anti-FGM/C activists, health professionals, women who perpetuatethe practice and, finally, survivors.''Kubra'' (Sydney, 2016): written by Dacia Maraini, this short play features a young woman who was subjected to FGM/C as a child and now, years later, brings her case to court in a search for justice. A Trial for Rape (Rome, 2018): adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning 1979 documentary of the same name, this play reveals how judicial procedures and attitudes toward sexual violence tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused.In their interviews, the writers, directors and producers discuss their conception and production of the works collected in Staging Violence Against Women and Girls. The plays and their creators highlight the urgency of raising awareness of these forms of violence and giving voice to survivors.

Staging Violence Against Women and Girls brings together three contemporary plays that denounce gendered violence, along with interviews with their creators and the practitioners who have staged them in different national contexts.Little Stitches (London, 2014): consisting of four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raúl Quirós Molina, Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall, this play presents Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) from the points of view of by-standers, anti-FGM/C activists, health professionals, women who perpetuatethe practice and, finally, survivors.''Kubra'' (Sydney, 2016): written by Dacia Maraini, this short play features a young woman who was subjected to FGM/C as a child and now, years later, brings her case to court in a search for justice. A Trial for Rape (Rome, 2018): adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning 1979 documentary of the same name, this play reveals how judicial procedures and attitudes toward sexual violence tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused.In their interviews, the writers, directors and producers discuss their conception and production of the works collected in Staging Violence Against Women and Girls. The plays and their creators highlight the urgency of raising awareness of these forms of violence and giving voice to survivors.

Between 1930 and 1960, popular female dramatists, including Paola Riccora, Anna Bonacci, Clotilde Masci, and Gici Ganzini Granata, set the stage for a new generation of feminist theatre and the development of contemporary Italian women’s theatre as a whole. Now largely forgotten, the lives and works of these dramatists are reintroduced into the scholarly conversation in Italian Women’s Theatre, 1930–1960. Following a general introduction, the book presents a selection of dramatic works, rounded out by commentary, performance histories, critical analyses, and biographical information.