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Part of
Shakespeare and Crisis: One hundred years of Italian narratives
Edited by Silvia Bigliazzi
[Shakespeare in European Culture 2] 2020
► pp. 245–275

Chapter 7
Narrating and unravelling Italian crises through Shakespeare (2000–2016)

Contemporary Italian theatre has witnessed a wide range of Shakespearean productions, whose significance with respect to the theme of crisis has been twofold. On the one hand, Shakespeare has been employed in Italy to face the radical reduction in economic support suffered by theatre professionals, who have then relied on the marketability of the Bard’s ‘brand’ for funding and to draw audiences to the theatre. On the other hand, Shakespeare’s plays have proved functional to unravelling cultural, social and political problems in Italy. Accordingly, this chapter investigates the function of Shakespeare both as a marketing strategy and as an intellectual tool to tackle the different crises which have traversed Italy since the beginning of the new millennium.

Keywords: crisis, contemporary theatre, contemporary Italy, reception, Shakespeare, Shakespeare brand, theatre, drama and performance studies
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Shakespeare and the economic and cultural crises of Italian theatre
  • Italian Shakespeare(s) against the economic crisis
  • “The only Shake-scene in a country”: Italian Shakespeare(s) against the cultural crisis
  • Shakespeare as an intellectual tool: Narrating Italian socio-political crises
  • ‘Narrating’ the Italian socio-political crises through Shakespeare: Carmelo Rifici’s Julius Caesar and The Tempest by Motus Theatre Company
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Websites (accessed July 27, 2019)
Published online: 22 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.2.07mon
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