‘But not love [...]’: An interview with Loredana Scaramella about her translation, adaptation and direction of La bisbetica domata (The Taming of the Shrew) at the Silvano Toti Globe Theatre in Rome (2018)

Abstract

At the heart of one of the historical parks of Rome, Villa Borghese, along one of its silent and shaded paths, a wooden replica of an Elizabethan playhouse rises up: the Silvano Toti Globe Theatre. Maddalena Pennacchia interviews Loredana Scaramella, theatre director, actress and translator-adaptor, who has been staging plays in this Shakespearean performance space since its inception in 2003. The interview is particularly dedicated to her acclaimed production of La bisbetica domata (The Taming of the Shrew) in 2018 which is set in the years immediately preceding the Second World War: a company of Italian actors of the avanspettacolo puts on a play at the inn where a Fascist officer is staying for the night with his squad; the aim is, apparently, that of playing a joke on a drunken tinker with anarchist sympathies who is taught a lesson on how to tame women. Music, dances and songs of the Thirties are added to Shakespeare’s translated text, inducing bursts of laughter mixed with tears, finally leaving the audience with deeper and sadder thoughts on the fragile human condition.