This interdisciplinary pathway explores the Italian puppet – as a performative object, image, and idea – in its varied geographic manifestations within the peninsula, diasporic experiences, and traditional and experimental expressions; it is grounded on the acknowledgment that Italian puppetry has meaningfully informed and sometimes enabled innovative cultural and artistic discourse on a transnational level.
Italian puppetry comprises a multifarious constellation of unique aesthetic experiences: the sophisticated marionette shows of the masters of Turin, Milan, and Rome, the Southern tradition of the opera dei pupi, the Neapolitan Pulcinella, the Commedia dell’Arte inspired burattini of the Po Valley. The indigenous qualities of Italy’s puppetry, which continue to evolve in surprising ways thanks to contemporary brilliant artists and performers, are examined as they pollinate other artistic fields within and outside Italy and enter into contact with literary and cinematographic canons. The know-how of Italian puppeteers and the aesthetic echoes of their labor is found in multiple areas, from modernist avant-garde art to Hollywood productions, from historical and social problem films to the cinema of poetry, from animation to satirical works.
Transcending the picturesque and stereotypical representation of Italian comicality and popular theater often promoted by the foreign gaze, this line of investigation considers specific material features of Italy’s puppetry traditions, linked to a unique repertoire and evocative sensorial qualities. As documented by Dr. Pacchioni’s research, the broadly held preconception of the puppet as marginal, powerless, and infantile is refuted by the crucial intermedial role that puppetry plays in raising consciousness about a vast array of social, historical, and spiritual issues of both localized and global relevance. Interested students and colleagues, from scholarly and creative fields, are encouraged to reach out.
Lead: Dr. Federico Pacchioni
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English edition: The Image of the Puppet in Italian Theater, Literature, and Film. London: Palgrave Macmillan 2022. (Winner of the Nancy Staub Award For Excellence in Publications on the Art of Puppetry. Union Internationale de la Marionnette – USA, 2024.) |
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(Winner of the Jury Award of Premio Cibotto, 2020.) |
The Ferrucci Institute collaborated with Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi at the international symposium “Pinocchio Burattino Globale” in Pescia, Italy, on June 1, 2024. View conference program.