Chapter 8 - Little Theatres

Summary

Definitions such as art theatres, exceptional theatres, little theatres, or independent theatres between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries refer to non-commercial experiments, especially in the European theatre. In Italy, their season was short-lived: The first was Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s Teatro degli Indipendenti, while the most famous was Pirandello’s Teatro degli Odescalchi. Often small, organized as private clubs to avoid censorship, they all had economic difficulties and generally brief lifespans. In Europe, however, they marked a significant phenomenon, privileging a repertoire that was often not only intellectually but also “politically” engaging: plays that spoke of new ways of being men and women, of new relationships between human beings. They corresponded with demands for change that were not only theatrical. In Italy, however, this chapter argues, the rise of the little theaters took place during the years of Fascism, so their innovations were cultural rather than political and lacked the extra-theatrical values that had been fundamental to other European art theatres.