LGBTQ in Italian Theater

50 Years from the Stonewall Uprising and of LGBTQ Liberation

Rainbow Jubilee is a series of three events that Casa Italiana put together with its theater company in residence KIT to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. The events will feature LGBTQ theater respectively from Italy (February 25^th), the US (March 25^th) and from the rest of the world (April 15^th): three events of live performance to discover how much LGBTQ topics have been portrayed on stage and by what means.

One of the first mentions of a gay character in Italian cinema was in 1962’s Parigi o cara by Franca Valeri. Yet the first mention of homosexuality in a play was in 1960’s Arialda by Giovanni Testori. Since then, more and more actors and playwrights have dedicated their work to LGBTQ stories. This is a journey into such stories from Arialda to contemporary Italian LGBTQ theater.

Curated by
Laura Caparrotti and Mario Merone, KIT

Historical remarks by
Brian DeGrazia (NYU) and Matthew Phillip Zundel (NYU)

Scenes by Italian playwrights:

Giovanni Testori L’Arialda (1960)
Aldo Nicolaj – A monologue
Franca Valeri Una Madre (in Italian)
Mino Bellei Bionda Fragola (in English) (1976)
Annibale Ruccello “Le cinque rose di Jennifer” (In original Italian with supertitles) (1980)
Paolo Poli “Rita da Cascia” (video)

From the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo.