The Theater of Narration

This book examines the theater of narration, an Italian performance genre and aesthetic that revisits historical events of national importance from local perspectives, drawing on the rich relationship between personal experiences and historical accounts. Incorporating original research from the private archives of leading narratorsartists who write and perform their workJuliet Guzzetta argues that the practice teaches audiences how ordinary people arent simply witnesses to history but participants in its creation. The theater of narration emerged in Italy during the labor and student protests, domestic terrorism, and social progress of the 1970s. Developing Dario Fo and Franca Rames style of political theater, influenced by Jerzy Grotowski and Bertolt Brecht, and following in the freewheeling actor-author traditions of the commedia dellarte, narrators created a new form of popular theater that grew in prominence in the 1990s and continues to gain recognition. Guzzetta traces the history of the theater of narration, contextualizing its originsboth political and intellectualand centers the contributions of Teatro Settimo, a performance group overlooked in previous studies. She also examines the genres experiments in television and media. The first full-length book in English on the subject, The Theater of Narration leverages close readings and a wealth of primary sources to examine the techniques used by narrators to remake historya process that reveals the ways in which history itself is a theater of narration.