The unpopular realism of Vincenzo Padula. Il Bruzio and Mariuzza Sbrìffiti

Abstract

theater of narration to a national audience and increasing the widespread dissemination of the format. Exhaustively researched over more than a decade, the book’s densely packed narrative displays some of the difficulties of transitioning a dissertation for a wider audience. The discourse had a 90s feel to it, and noticeably absent was how theater of narration fits within postdramatic and polyvocal trends that have earmarked EU theater over the past ten years. For a student seminar or theaterbased audience, selected graphs or tables would have helped differentiate eras and movements. Exploring the various dramaturgical structures would be helpful to playwrights and theater practitioners, particularly considering that the author is herself a playwright. The reader is largely left to do the unpacking while wading through the major points in the book. Although the book is undoubtedly a landmark academic study with a number of photos from important productions, accessibility factors make for a daunting read considering the unfamiliarity of most names and titles in the book, and the genre itself which Guzzetta is introducing to a new audience outside of Italy. While several erstwhile festivals are mentioned, a blind spot would be the internationally esteemed and widely reported annual festival Quartieri dell’Arte based in Viterbo and artistic directed by Gian Maria Cervo. Cervo utilizes sitespecific outlier venues like abandoned civic buildings, medieval, and historic sites for narrator-based and media experiments. This autumnal festival or the Tramedautore mentioned earlier would seem to provide a throughline to the continuing viability of the genre. It is noteworthy that festivals are the most reliable venues and funding sources for emerging Italian theater artists to disseminate their work outside of their region. Guzzetta’s opus is a major contribution to Italian theater studies particularly for English speakers and American academics whose references to Italian theater may be limited to Dario Fo’s political satires or nostalgia for Pirandello as the estimable paragon of Italian playwrights. The book’s main value is to provide a powerful, cogent, and profoundly researched historical reference and foundation that establishes not only the genre of teatro di narrazione but also encourages further inquiry and development of narrative works by theater artists and scholars.