This collection brings together three international and contemporary plays that each denounce violence against women, alongside interviews with the creators and practitioners who brought them to life. With interviews with writers, directors and producers, who discuss the conception and staging of their plays, their hope is to de-glamourize the staging of violence, to give voice to the survivors of gendered violence, and to create awareness and empathy within the audiences. Little Stitches (London, 2014): four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raul Quiros Molina , Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall on the issue of Female Genital Mutilation as seen from the point of view of by-standers, health professionals, women who support the practice and, finally, survivors. 'Kubra' (Sydney, 2016) by Dacia Maraini, features a young female protagonist who was subjected to FGM/C as a child, and now brings her case to court. Rape Trial (Rome, 2018), adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning documentary of the same title made for Italian state television in 1979, shows how attitudes toward sexual violence, and judicial procedures, tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused, in court and in everyday discourse.

This book explores an important moment in Italian women's theatre and cultural history: plays written for all-women casts between 1946 and the mid-1960s, authored for the most part by women and performed exclusively by women. Because they featured only female roles, they concentrated on aspects of specifically women's experience, be it their spirituality, their future lives as wives and mothers, their present lives as workers or students, or their relationships with friends, sisters and mothers. Most often performed in a Catholic environment, they were meant to both entertain and educate, reflecting the specific issues that both performers and spectators had to confront in the years between the end of the war and the beginning of the economic miracle. Drawing on material never before researched, Educational Theatre for Women in Post-World War II Italy: A Stage of Their Own recovers the life and works of forgotten women playwrights while also discussing the role models that educational theatre offered to the young Italian women coming of age in the post-war years.

This book explores an important moment in Italian women's theatre and cultural history: plays written for all-women casts between 1946 and the mid-1960s, authored for the most part by women and performed exclusively by women. Because they featured only female roles, they concentrated on aspects of specifically women's experience, be it their spirituality, their future lives as wives and mothers, their present lives as workers or students, or their relationships with friends, sisters and mothers. Most often performed in a Catholic environment, they were meant to both entertain and educate, reflecting the specific issues that both performers and spectators had to confront in the years between the end of the war and the beginning of the economic miracle. Drawing on material never before researched, Educational Theatre for Women in Post-World War II Italy: A Stage of Their Own recovers the life and works of forgotten women playwrights while also discussing the role models that educational theatre offered to the young Italian women coming of age in the post-war years.

This collection brings together three international and contemporary plays that each denounce violence against women, alongside interviews with the creators and practitioners who brought them to life. With interviews with writers, directors and producers, who discuss the conception and staging of their plays, their hope is to de-glamourize the staging of violence, to give voice to the survivors of gendered violence, and to create awareness and empathy within the audiences. Little Stitches (London, 2014): four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raul Quiros Molina , Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall on the issue of Female Genital Mutilation as seen from the point of view of by-standers, health professionals, women who support the practice and, finally, survivors. 'Kubra' (Sydney, 2016) by Dacia Maraini, features a young female protagonist who was subjected to FGM/C as a child, and now brings her case to court. Rape Trial (Rome, 2018), adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning documentary of the same title made for Italian state television in 1979, shows how attitudes toward sexual violence, and judicial procedures, tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused, in court and in everyday discourse.

Between 1930 and 1960, popular female dramatists, including Paola Riccora, Anna Bonacci, Clotilde Masci, and Gici Ganzini Granata, set the stage for a new generation of feminist theatre and the development of contemporary Italian women's theatre as a whole. Now largely forgotten, the lives and works of these dramatists are reintroduced into the scholarly conversation in "Italian Women's Theatre, 1930-1960." Following a general introduction, the book presents a selection of dramatic works, rounded out by commentary, performance histories, critical analyses, and biographical information.