NEW PUBLICATION
Society for Italian Studies
Occasional Papers series, no. 4
Richard Andrews, A Theatre of Community Memory: Tuscan Sharecropping
and the Teatro Povero di Monticchiello.
xii + 128 pp. 1998. ISBN 0 9525901 4 X
In a small Tuscan village, for over thirty years, the people have
been examining and expressing themselves through the medium of an
annual drama production which attracts nation-wide attention, with a
new text being written every year. Their `autodrammi' have meditated
regularly on the transfer of rural Tuscan society, in the 1960s,
from a sharecropping community with medieval structures to the
post-industrial world in which we all now live. In the process they
have preserved memories of an important phase in Italian social
history. This study, composed by Richard Andrews after a
fifteen-year acquaintance with the theatre of Monticchiello, first
of all traces the political and social process by which Tuscan
sharecropping came to an end. It then examines in detail the way in
which that story has been remembered, analysed and even mythologized
in the artistic consciousness of a lively modern community. The book
will be of equal interest to Italianists, to historians, and to
students of theatre.
Prices including postage: stlg16 (for mailing within EU); stlg17.50 / US$30
(for mailing elsewhere). (Members of the Society for Italian Studies
may order this book from the Treasurer for stlg13.50 (EU), stlg15 / US$25
(elsewhere) until 30 April 1999.)
Order from: Society for Italian Studies, PO Box YR7, Leeds, LS9 7UU
(UK), or by fax from W. S. Maney & Son Ltd, + 44 (0) 113 248 6983.
Please make cheques payable to W. S. Maney & Son Ltd.
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