Italian Grotesque Theater

Abstract

This is the first book in English to explore Italian grotesque in the twentieth century. Chiarelli's The Mask and the Face Antonelli's A Man Confronts Himself, and Cavacchioli's The Bird of Paradise have been widely staged in Europe and the Americas by prominent directors, including Pirandello. These playwrights exercised a pivotal role in stage renewal, forged links with the most avant-garde contemporary thinking, and, some of them at least, set the pace for what became, much later, theater of the absurd.