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The culminating chapter, “Mussolini the Impresario, II: Fascism and the Theatre for Masses,” provides a panoramic look at the numerous regime-sponsored theatrical endeavors developed mainly in the 1930s. Breaking with the tendency to read these as a rupture with the more liberal, vanguard proposals of the 1920s, the author draws several lines of continuity between fascism’s two decades and across a variety of performance-related initiatives – including the Carri di Tespi mobile theatres, the Theatrical Saturday for urban laborers, the Fascist University Groups’ Experimental Playhouse Network, the National Institute for Ancient Drama, and the foundation of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts – and considers them as single elements of a comprehensive plan that sought to meet the dictator’s explicit call for a production system that would simultaneously provide access, pedagogy, and innovation. The chapter offers a new concept for understanding the regime’s theatrical politics: neither the so-called aestheticization of politics nor the politicization of aesthetics, Mussolini's method was that of a strategic aestheticism, which would nevertheless satisfy the needs of art and of politics at one and the same time.
Benito Mussolini has persistently been described as an 'actor' – and also as a master of illusions. In her vividly narrated account of the Italian dictator's relationship with the theatre, Patricia Gaborik discards any metaphorical notions of Il Duce as a performer and instead tells the story of his life as literal spectator, critic, impresario, dramatist and censor of the stage. Discussing the ways in which the autarch's personal tastes and convictions shaped, in fascist Italy, theatrical programming, she explores Mussolini's most significant dramatic influences, his association with important figures such as Luigi Pirandello, Gabriele D'Annunzio and George Bernard Shaw, his oversight of stage censorship, and his forays into playwriting. By focusing on its subject's manoeuvres in the theatre, and manipulation of theatrical ideas, this consistently illuminating book transforms our understandings of fascism as a whole. It will have strong appeal to readers in both theatre studies and modern Italian history.
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