Once upon a time, in the oral and literary realm of fairy tales, stories travelled from voice to voice and from hearth to page, carrying the power to awaken fear and desire. Tessitrici di fiabe draws on the great Italian fairy-tale tradition that later spread across Europe.

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The performance is inspired by Lo cunto de li cunti (The Tale of Tales), the baroque masterpiece of Neapolitan fairy tales by Giambattista Basile (1575–1632), and by the great nineteenth-century collectors of Sicilian folklore, Laura Gonzenbach (1842–1878) and Giuseppe Pitrè (1841–1916), whose death marks its 110th anniversary this year. Many of the tales Pitrè recorded were told to him by Agatuzza Messia, a gifted Sicilian storyteller whose voice still resonates through these narratives.

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At the heart of the play stand Italian women who passed down fairy tales by word of mouth around the fireplace and within the domestic spaces of everyday life. Their stories were filled with hopes and struggles, with abductions and ordeals. Through them, they confronted the shadows of oppression and violence.

 

Women’s courage lies at the centre of the staging, casting light on their imaginative narratives as a path towards justice and a way of reclaiming an alternative destiny.