Staging Violence Against Women and Girls: Plays and Interviews

Staging Violence Against Women and Girls brings together three contemporary plays that denounce gendered violence, along with interviews with their creators and the practitioners who have staged them in different national contexts.

Little Stitches (London, 2014): consisting of four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raúl Quirós Molina, Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall, this play presents Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) from the points of view of by-standers, anti-FGM/C activists, health professionals, women who perpetuate
the practice and, finally, survivors.

’Kubra’ (Sydney, 2016): written by Dacia Maraini, this short play features a young woman who was subjected to FGM/C as a child and now, years later, brings her case to court in a search for justice.

A Trial for Rape (Rome, 2018): adapted for theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning 1979 documentary of the same name, this play reveals how judicial procedures and attitudes toward sexual violence tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused.

In their interviews, the writers, directors and producers discuss their conception and production of the works collected in Staging Violence Against Women and Girls. The plays and their creators highlight the urgency of raising awareness of these forms of violence and giving voice to survivors.

Daniela Cavallaro lectures in Italian studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has authored several articles and two books (Italian Women’s Theatre 1930-1960: an anthology of plays; Educational Theatre for Women in post-WWII Italy: a stage of their own).

Luciana d’Arcangeli is Cassamarca Senior Lecturer in Italian at Flinders University, Australia. Her areas of expertise are: Italian theatre, cinema, 20th century studies, translation (FCIL) and interpreting (MITI), and scholarship (FHEA). Luciana coordinates the ACIS funded project ＂Indelible (Eng) / Indelebile (It): The representation of (in)visible violence against women and their resistance＂.

Claire Kennedy was until recently Cassamarca Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at Griffith University. Australia, conducting research in applied linguistics and more recently translation studies and the Italian presence in Australia. Over the last 30 years she has participated in numerous community theatre productions in Brisbane concerned with social and political issues.