The Methuen Drama Anthology of Contemporary Italian Plays

Margherita Laera is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre at the University of Kent, where she serves as Deputy Head of the School of Arts and Architecture. She is the author of Playwriting in Europe: Mapping Ecosystems and Practices with Fabulamundi (Routledge Focus, 2022); Theatre & Translation (Methuen Drama, 2019) and Reaching Athens: Community, Democracy and Other Mythologies in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy (Peter Lang, 2013), and editor of Theatre and Adaptation: Return, Rewrite, Repeat (Methuen Drama, 2014). Margherita also works as a theatre translator from and into Italian and English. She is co-editor of the ’Theatre &’ book series for Methuen Drama, and founder of Performing International Plays, an organization promoting theatre (in) translation in secondary schools.

Biographies

Francesco Alberici is an actor, author and theatre director. Alongside his work with his company Frigoproduzioni, he collaborates with other artists too. With the company, Deflorian/Tagliarini, he took part in five shows as an interpreter and co-author: among them the Italian version of the monologue Chi ha ucciso mio padre [Who Killed My Father] by Edouard Louis, for which he won the 2021 UBU Award for best actor under 35. Among other important collaborations are those with Liv Ferracchiati and with Babilonia Teatri, winners of the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale. In 2022, together with Enrico Baraldi, he authored the dramaturgy of the piece, Non tre sorelle [Not Three Sisters], which was awarded the ANCT Prize by Italy’s National Association of Theatre Critics. His play Bidibibodibiboo was a finalist at the 56th edition of the prestigious Riccione Award and opened at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan in 2024.

Emanuele Aldrovandiis an Italian writer, playwright, screenwriter and director. He is the recipient of the most important Italian playwriting awards (Riccione/Tondelli, Pirandello, Hystrio). His plays have been translated, performed and published in English, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Slovenian, Czech, Croatian, Romanian, Catalan and Arabic. As a director he has worked with the Emilia Romagna National Theatre and Turin’s Teatro Stabile, directing his own plays. He wrote and directed three short films that have been presented in many Italian and international festivals (Bataclan won the Silver Ribbon 2021 for best Italian short film) and he’s now working on his first feature film. In 2024 his first novel, Il nostro grande niente, was published by Einaudi.He teaches writing for the stage and cinema at Civica Scuola Paolo Grassi in Milan and Holden School in Turin.

Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a Somali-Italian poet, novelist, playwright and librettist based in Brussels, Belgium. She grew up in Mogadishu but fled to Europe at the outbreak of the civil war. In 2006, she won the Lingua Madre National Literary Prize. She is the author of three novels: Madre piccola [Little Mother], published by Frassinelli in 2007, and winner of the Vittorini Prize; Il comandante del fiume [Commander of the river], published by 66thand2nd in 2014. Both titles came out in English published by Indiana University Press as part of their Global African Voices series. Lastly, Le stazioni della luna [Stations of the Moon], published by 66thand2nd in 2021. She also wrote the ekphrasis La danza dell’orice (Juxta Press, 2020) and the collection of short stories Le ceneri della fenice [The Phoenix’s Ashes], published by Hopefulmonster in 2022. She holds a PhD in African Studies from the University of Naples, L’Orientale. Antigone Power is her first play.

Atri Banerjee Atri Banerjee is a theatre director and translator based in London. He grew up in Oxford and Florence, read English at Cambridge, and completed an MPhil in Medieval & Renaissance Literature at Cambridge and an MFA in Theatre Directing at Birkbeck. Atri has directed productions at venues including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Almeida and the Royal Exchange Theatre, and is currently Creative Associate at the Gate Theatre. In 2019, Atri won The Stage Debut Award for Best Director for Hobson’s Choice at the Exchange in Manchester. In 2022, he received a Peter Hall Bursary from the National Theatre and was named by The Stage as one of ’25 theatre-makers to watch out for over the next quarter-century’. On screen, Atri directed HARM for the BBC and Bush Theatre. As translator, Atri has been commissioned by the Royal Court, RSC, and Fabulamundi. His translation of Pier Lorenzo Pisano’s Carbon was selected for a 2023 honour by Eurodram, the European network for drama in translation.

Magdalena Barile is a playwright, screenwriter and teacher. As a playwright she has worked with prestigious venues and producers in Italy, such as Milan’s Teatro dell’Elfo, Turin’s Teatro Stabile, Venice Biennale of Theatre, and Milan’s Piccolo Teatro. She has been a member of Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe network since 2012. Her plays have been translated into French, English, Catalan, German, Swedish and Russian. For the past ten years she has been working as screenwriter for the Italian Swiss Television (RSI) and for major Italian broadcasters, authoring successful shows such as Camera Café and l’Albero Azzurro. Since 2020 she is the programme leader for the playwriting course at the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi in Milan. She also teaches screenwriting at the European Institute of Design in Milan. Her latest book, Gentleman Anne and Other Feminist Plays, published by Vanda Edizioni, is a collection of plays about queer identities such as Anaïs Nin and Janis Joplin. Her new play The Collector is freely inspired by Peggy Guggenheim.

Davide Carnevali is an author and director. He is an associate artist at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano. He holds a PhD in Theatre Theory from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona with a year at the Freie Universität Berlin. He teaches playwriting and theatre theory at the Civica Scuola Paolo Grassi in Milan, at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona, at the Universidad de Castilla y León and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is the editor of the journal Estudis Escènics and collaborates with many international publications. He is the recipient of the Theatertreffen Stückemarkt (2009); the Prix de les Journées des auteurs de Lyon (2012); the Premio Riccione per il Teatro (2013); the Premio Hystrio alla Drammaturgia (2018). His plays have been translated into 15 languages and staged internationally. His work is published by Einaudi and Il Saggiatore in Italy, by Actes Sud and Les Solitaires Intempestifs in France. He has published the academic study, Forma dramática y representación del mundo en el teatro europeo contemporáneo [Dramatic Form and Representations of the World in Contemporary European Theatre], published in Ciudad de México by Paso de Gato (2017) and the collaction of short stories Il diavolo Innamorato, published in Rome by Fandango (2019).

Valentina Diana lives in the Piedmont countryside with a dog named Orlando. She has been active in the Italian literary scene for many years as a writer of poetry, fiction and plays. Her production stands out for an authentic and original voice, capable of exploring the complexity of the human soul with ironic, intimate and deeply reflective tones. Her plays include: I tre monologhi [The Three Monologues] (Einaudi, 2022), a collection of monologues; La palestra della felicità [The Happiness Gym] (Cue Press, 2016), a play on the search for happiness combining drama and irony. Her novels include Smamma (Einaudi, 2014), treating family dynamics with a sarcastic and irreverent vein; and Mariti [Husbands] (Einaudi, 2015), in which she explores the nuances of couple relationships with a sharp eye. She has published the poetry collection, Uno [One] (Perrone, 2022), where her observations of the world become more introspective.

Dr Margherita Laera is a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre in at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, where she is Director of Research and Innovation for the School of Arts and Architecture. Her research and impact work explores the many intersections between theatre, migration and modern languages. She has published widely on contemporary Italian and European theatre, theatre translation and adaptation. She is the author of Playwriting in Europe: Mapping Ecosystems and Practices with Fabulamundi (Routledge 2022); Theatre & Translation (Bloomsbury, 2019) and Reaching Athens: Community, Democracy and Other Mythologies in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy (Peter Lang, 2013). As an editor, she published Theatre and Adaptation: Return, Rewrite, Repeat (Bloomsbury, 2014). Since 2024, she is the co-editor of the book series Theatre & for Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Margherita regularly translates plays from English to Italian and vice versa. She serves as a Trustee of the London-based theatre company, Actors Touring Company.

Nalini Vidoolah Mootoosamy is a Mauritian-Italian playwright and writer. After completing a PhD in French Studies, focusing on the narratological study of fictional characters, Mootoosamy founded Ananke Arts Association in 2018, where she leads theatre training workshops and performance events as a playwright. Mootoosamy collaborates with the Teatro Utile project at the Accademia dei Filodrammatici in Milan, offering drama training to second-generation migrants in Italy. In 2021, she joined the Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe network, participating in several theatre projects across Europe. Mootoosamy’s works for theatre include: The Dance of the Kabootar (2019), The Foreigner’s Smile (2020, winner of the Fabulamundi Call for Second-Generation Migrant Playwrights in Italy), Now is Forever (2021), Bleach Me (2022), Lost & Found (2022 - selected as a finalist for the prestigious Theater Award Premio Riccione 2023), Eleven Days: What Happened to Agatha Christie? (2023) and Ban Ban Kaliban (2024).

Pier Lorenzo Pisano is a director and author of films, plays and novels. He graduated as a film director at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Italy’s National Film School). His debut short film Così in terra was selected in competition at the 71st Cannes Film Festival and in more than fifty international festivals. The following year his second short film Antiorario [Anticlockwise] was produced and presented at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival. He was author in residence at the New York Theater Workshop (NYC) and at the Royal Court Theatre (London). He has received the most prestigious Italian awards for new writing, including the Riccione Award, the Solinas Award, the Tondelli Award, the Hystrio Award. He published Il buio non fa paura [The dark isn’t frightening] (NN), Carbonio Carbon] (Il Saggiatore), Per il tuo bene [For Your Own Good], Semidei [Demi-Gods] (Einaudi). His plays have been translated into 14 languages and performed worldwide, including international venues like the Avignon Festival and FIBA (Buenos Aires). He is currently an associate artist of Piccolo Theatre in Milan.

Flora Pitrolo is a scholar, curator and translator, currently teaching History of Theatre and Performance at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo and a Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Her work investigates the problems of the postmodern through experimental music and performance archives, mostly in Italy and South-Eastern Europe, from the 1980s to the present. Her most recent books are Taroni-Cividin: Performance, Video, Expanded Cinema 1977-1984 (Silvana 2023, co-edited with Jennifer Malvezzi) and Global Dance Cultures in the 1970s and 1980s: Disco Heterotopias (Palgrave 2022, co-edited with Marko Zubak). Flora’s work as a curator and programmer currently includes co-directing the festival Teatro Bastardo and the collective Nuova Orfeo, both in Palermo, Italy, and acting as a consultant on larger EU and national cultural projects.

Marco Young is a British-Italian actor and translator. He trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and the University of Cambridge, and has worked onstage as an actor in London and across the UK. Translated productions in the UK with his theatre company Riva Theatre include Utoya by Edoardo Erba (Arcola Theatre, August 2024, published with Bloomsbury Methuen), Scusate se non siamo morti in mare [Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea] by Emanuele Aldrovandi (Park Theatre, September 2023, published with Salamander Street Press). His translation of Miracoli metropolitani [Suburban Miracles] by Gabriele Di Luca was showcased at Camden People’s Theatre in January 2023, and his translation of Allarmi [Alarms] by Emanuele Aldrovandi received a rehearsed reading at Omnibus Theatre in July 2023. He has translated texts by Stefano Massini, Davide Enia, Fabio Pisano. He was a mentee on the 2022-23 Foreign Affairs Theatre Translator Mentorship Programme, and a member of Mercury Theatre Colchester’s Producer Development Programme 2022-2023.