PRESENTATION BY FRANCESCA SPEDALIERI OF “MPALERMU: DANCERS & OTHER PLAYS”
Friday, October 25th at 6pm
Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago – 500 N Michigan Ave, Suite 1450
Presented in collaboration with the University of Illinois Chicago on the occasion of the 19th edition of the Italian Language Week in the World, presented under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic of Italy. This year’s edition will take place from October 21 to 27th and will have as its theme, “Italian on the Stage.”
Presentation by translator Francesca Spedalieri of the book, “mPalermu: Dancers and Other Plays,” (2019, Swan Isle Press), by Emma Dante.
Emma Dante’s passionate and brutal plays stem from a need to confront important familial and societal realities in contemporary southern Italy. Her twenty-first century tales challenge stereotypes of the country and stage acts of resistance against the social, political, and economic conditions of Sicily. The seven works in this anthology paint a complex image of the peninsula through stories of disenfranchisement, misogyny, deep-set bigotry, and religious hypocrisy that reveal economic disparities between the north and south of the country, oppressive gender relations, and deep rooted mafioso-like attitudes. Dante’s lyrical and visceral storytelling oscillates between the humorous and the tragic aspects of everyday life, undertaking an irreverent subversion of the status quo with its extreme physicality and unsettling imagery.
Born in Palermo in 1967, Emma Dante is a playwright and director.
Francesca Spedalieri is a visiting assistant professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Stony Brook University.
Free and open to the public
RSVP at https://emmadante.eventbrite.com