Abstract
Dacia Maraini’s 1970s dramaturgical oeuvre, which the author has identified as her most ‘barricade’ theatre, evidences an undisputable commitment to the cause of second-wave Italian feminism. While the connection between social protest and women’s self-representation in Maraini’s theatre has amply, and convincingly, been discussed (Sumeli Weinberg 1993; Cavallaro 2000; Mariani: 1998, 2000; Cruciata 2003; Marinelli and Matassa 2008), her use of feminist ideology in disrupting existing aesthetic conventions has received scarce scholarly attention. Current criticism of feminist theatre in general, and of Maraini’s in particular, seems to privilege the dramatic text at the expenses of an equally as important analysis of the visual aspects of the theatrical performance per se. This article acknowledges the dramatic work as an embodied form of narration that, as such, is best analysed by taking into account, also, its aesthetic components. It discusses two plays, Il Manifesto (1969) and La donna perfetta (1974), that are representative of Maraini’s gender politics and theatrical aesthetics at the time they were written. Looking not just at the written text, but also at the original video recordings of the performances, the aim of my study is twofold. Firstly, it assesses the use of theatre in rethinking the representation of women’s gender roles in 1970s. Secondly, it foregrounds the impact of feminist ideology in rupturing existing dramatic conventions. Continuing the line of mimetic rejection inaugurated in the Italian context by Luigi Pirandello amongst others, whilst also distancing itself from the excess of experimentalism of the coeval neo-avant-garde, Maraini’s feminist theatre proves a convincing political tool to restore the voice of women’s long silenced body — with the focus on the theatrical (in the sense of both dramatic and deliberately exaggerated) nature of the gendered identity performed on stage. Starting from the premise that our masculine and feminine roles are not rooted in biology or anatomy, but in codes of behaviour that are learned and then re-enacted on a daily basis (Butler 1988, 1999), the plays discussed here exemplify the way in which feminist performance can become a privileged site through which these reiterations emerge, and theatre the space that makes this emergence possible.
Highlights
It was not until the early 1970s that the first feminist theatre companies began to emerge in the major Italian cities.1 Scholarship on Italian women’s writing has accounted for this relatively late advent of female dramatists in Italy in comparison with other countries such as Britain or the United States as being due to a theatrical tradition whereby directors and leading actors exerted a major influence over playwrights, so much so that female authors were doubly marginalised, as women and as dramatists (O’Healy 254)
While the interconnection between social protest and women’s self-representation in Maraini’s theatre has been convincingly discussed (Sumeli Weinberg 1993; Cavallaro 2000; Mariani: 1998; Cruciata 2003; Marinelli and Matassa 2008), her use of feminist ideology in disrupting existing aesthetic conventions has largely been neglected by the Italian critical canon
It evaluates the extent to which theatre served as an ideological vehicle for feminism in representing and denouncing women’s gender roles in 1970s Italy, and it assesses how, in turn, feminist ideology impacted on theatre in departing from existing dramatic conventions and introducing new aesthetic advances
Summary
Towards a Feminist Impegno Dacia Maraini is a remarkable figure in the Italian cultural and artistic panorama and one of the most prolific national playwrights to date. It is acknowledged that the late 1960s ‘marked the beginning of Maraini’s feminist activities and activism: she conducted sociological inquiries (e.g., on conditions in women’s prisons), published articles, wrote and produced plays’ (Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 4), concurrently reflecting in her texts the major concerns of the women’s movement, such as abortion, conjugal abuse, gender violence and maternity. The ‘denotation-connotation dialectic’ (Elam 7) here leaves no space for semantic ambiguity, for the sign-vehicle (a group of women sitting on aligned stools and reiterating faultlessly synchronised hand and foot movements) and what it stands for (a production line) immediately suggest the scenario that is being gesturally conveyed In this sense, Maraini’s mise-en-scène marks a point of departure with the aesthetic research of the coeval neo-avantgarde, the so-called Nuovo Teatro Italiano, for the author is not interested in establishing a new relation with the object (or the body) on stage, but rather in maintaining the unities of action and place – her scenic economy being dictated less by the willingness to experiments with the theatrical means than by the programmatic intent to give prominence to the spoken word, besides the more practical, obvious necessity to keep costs down.. Anna’s unruly femininity constitutes a potential menace to the social order and, as such, ought to be disciplined into submission – death (metaphorically transposed into women’s silencing) being the price exacted for subverting the patriarchal norms
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