La Figlia dell'Anarchico: Dramma Sociale in Tre Atti. Jessup, PA: Gruppo Autonomo, 1928.

Becchetti was one of several women radicals who wrote plays to reflect their political views, including that of the emancipation of women. These plays were often at the center of leisure activities of radicals (replacing religiously themed events) celebrated in Marcella Bencivenna's Italian Immigrant Radical Culture and Jennifer Guglielmo's Living the Revolution. Becchetti was a worker in Jessup, PA, where this work was published.

This play centers on eight immigrant women - four mothers (including a contessa and baronessa) and their daughters - staging the pain and poverty under which they, and so many other immigrants, lived, but which also "shouted with the spirit of hope."

The preface by the Gruppo Autonomo, while celebrating the play for its realism, also notes that in publishing the work, the Gruppo is "not pretending to present a masterpiece of art and literature." This is consistent with radical theater's avowedly didactic purposes, a more powerful way for workers to grasp the conflict with capitalism than by being lectured to.

Nena Becchetti

Gruppo Autonomo

1928

20x14cm; 32 p.

Italian