Madre: dramma in 4 atti [Mothers: drama in 4 acts]. Chicago: Italian Labor Publishig [sic] Co, 1931.

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Title

Madre: dramma in 4 atti [Mothers: drama in 4 acts]. Chicago: Italian Labor Publishig [sic] Co, 1931.

Description

First produced in New York on April 19, 1931, at the Civic Repertory Theatre, Madre remains one of the best-known anti-fascist plays written and produced in America by Italians. It is discussed at some length by historian Marcella Bencivenni in Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: the Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890-1940 (New York: NYU Press, 2011), from which this description is largely drawn.

Madre is the story of an Italian family torn apart by the advent of fascism, with older brother (an anti-fascist lawyer) battling with his younger, pro-fascist brother, and the mother bewildered that politics could be more important than family ties. Vacirca's point is that fascism's negative impacts extended beyond the political life of Italy to the personal, that is, the family. Ernesto Valentini (q.v.) wrote that Madre was a "pure revolutionary act of useful and effective propaganda."

Vacirca was one of several radicals who understood theatre's social function, as both a source of entertainment and a political and educational tool, a means to invigorate Italian American cultural life and simultaneously help make the world better. Vacirca understood theatre's mission could and should be to cultivate a specifically revolutionary esthetic, to create an authentic "popular" theatre by the people and for the people, combining art and politics, education and entertainment, thought and action.

For more on the life of the play's author, see entries here for La Russia in fiamme and the magazine Il Solco, this latter in the general entry for Jan.-Sept. 1927.

Creator

Vincenzo Vacirca

Publisher

Italian Labor Publishing Co.

Date

1931

Format

18 x 13cm; 103 p.

Language

Italian

Citation

Vincenzo Vacirca, “Madre: dramma in 4 atti [Mothers: drama in 4 acts]. Chicago: Italian Labor Publishig [sic] Co, 1931.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed March 29, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/359.

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