Mpalermu, Dancers, and Other Plays bookcover

Mpalermu, Dancers, and Other Plays

Emma Dante 

(Author)

4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
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Description

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.
This exquisite first English translation of Emma Dante's work enables English-speaking readers, theatre scholars, and directors alike to encounter character-driven "civic theatre" with its portraits of individuals existing at the fringes of Italy. Ultimately, it allows us to "listen" to those who are not given a voice anywhere else.

Product Details

PublisherSwan Isle Press
Publish DateApril 15, 2020
Pages320
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9780997228755
Dimensions8.9 X 6.0 X 1.1 inches | 1.1 pounds

About the Author

Born in Palermo in 1967, Emma Dante is a playwright and director.
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.

Reviews

"The Sicilian playwright Emma Dante is the subject of Francesca Spedalieri's essay and her translation of an excerpt of the play mPalermu. Spedalieri traces how the interweaving of Palermitan dialect and standard Italian recapitulates the characters' ambiguous position between their regional identity and their longing to join the cultural and linguistic mainstream of a country that relegates them to near-colonial status. Spedalieri's 'foreignized' translation makes this contradiction audible, palpable to English-speaking audiences."--Ralf Remshardt "Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature"

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