Tararà – by Luigi Pirandello
Tararà is a theatre monologue adapted from works by Nobel prize-winner Luigi Pirandello and performed in Sicilian – with English surtitles – in Agrigento, Italy. As Agrigento becomes Italy’s City of Culture in 2025, this theatre project, led by Dr Enza De Francisci in partnership with Mario Gaziano’s Pirandello Stable Festival, offers an innovative model for safeguarding vulnerable languages such as Sicilian (assessed as such by UNESCO) while also raising awareness, by the nature of its topic, on the sensitive issue of femicide.
Date: Friday 28 June 2024
Time: 18:00 - 19:15
Venue: Circolo Culturale Empedocleo in Agrigento, Italy
Category: Films and theatre
As Agrigento becomes Italy’s City of Culture in 2025, the project, led by Dr Enza De Francisci in partnership with the Pirandello Stable Festival theatre company directed by Mario Gaziano, is reflecting on the need to make theatre productions more accessible for in-coming audiences. To support this, the project, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in collaboration with Glasgow University, is maximising the opportunity of the City of Culture celebrations by producing new English surtitles around the Sicilian play, Tararà, with excerpts adapted from ‘The Truth’ (1912), Cap and Bells (1916), and The Rules of the Game (1918) by Nobel-Prize winning author, Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936). The resources will offer an innovative model for safeguarding vulnerable languages. While lesser-spoken languages tend to be dethroned by ‘dominant’ languages in translation processes, the surtitles will allow wider audiences to follow the performances in the original language without erasing it from the stage, thereby protecting the use of Sicilian (considered a “vulnerable language” by UNESCO).