Militarismo e miseria: dramma in 3 atti [Militarism and Misery: drama in three acts]. Brooklyn: Tip. Guerriero, 1916.

Militarismo e miseria: dramma in 3 atti [Militarism and Misery: drama in three acts]. Brooklyn: Tip. Guerriero, 1916.

The action of this anti-war play unfolds in a little town in northern Italy during the "giornate rosse [Red Days]" of June 1914. The play was presented for the first time at the Filodrammatica Sovversiva di New York [Subversive Amateur Dramatic Society], at Caecilia Hall in Brooklyn, on January 9, 1916, "con grande successo [with great success]."

Giovanni Onesti (who published as "J" Onesti, presumably for the English version of his name, "John") was attached to the Gruppo Pietro Gori. He makes a "confession" at the outset to explain why the last scene of the first act resembles another play, "Reduce a Tripoli."

The play was received enthusiastically by Italian Americans in, among other places, New London, Connecticut, according to Richard Lenzi in Facing the Dawn: Italian Anarchists in New London (2019).

The collection contains no other imprints of the "Tipografia Guerriero" of 703 Lorimer Street in Brooklyn, nor have I seen its name as printer or publisher of Italian-language imprints, including in the vast holdings of the Anderson Library of the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC). There existed a "Tipografia Guerriero Guerra" in Perugia in the 1940s, but that cannot be the same publisher.

J. Onesti

Tip. Guerriero

1916

19 x 12cm; 43 p.

Italian