Conference Programme: Pirandello and Popular Performance Cultures in Italy (hybrid)

2026-10-05

Conference Programme
Pirandello and Popular Performance Cultures in Italy

10:00 – 10:20              Registration and Breakfast  
10:20 – 10:30                 President of the Society’s Welcome  

10:30 – 11:45              Pirandello’s Studies in the Medical Humanities

  1.  Stefania Taviano (University of Messina): Translation as a Social Practice. Pirandello Made  Accessible.
  2. Maryam Farahani and Ian Schermbrucker (University of Liverpool): Pirandello’s Progressive Psychology Contra Western “Cognitive Reappraisal”: Reading East-West Performativity in an  Aesthetic Context.
  3. Angela Tiziana Tarantini (Utrecht University): Sign-language-integrated Theatre.
  4. Roberto Trippini (Librettist): Tarantismo as Prime Instance of Folk Psychotherapy.  

11:45 – 12:15              Coffee Break.  

12:15 – 13:30              Pirandello in Dialogue

  1. Lisa Sarti (The City University of New York): “Così dette canzonettiste”: Bodies, Voices, and  Spectators in Pirandello’s Café-Chantant.
  2. Andrea Carnevali (SSML di Ancona): Performing Pirandello beyond the Stage: Actors, Photography and Popular Visual Culture.
  3. Adriana Torquete (University of Reading): Thomas Kilroy’s Six Characters in Search of an Author  and Henry - Adaptation as a Collaborative Process.
  4. Claudia Karagoz (Saint Louis Univeristy): Staging Resistance: Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s Rewriting  of Female Defiance in Antigone Power.

13:30 – 14:30              Lunch  

14:30 – 16:00              Pirandello and Popular Performance Cultures

  1. ‘Tunde Awosanmi (University of Ibadan, Nigeria): Dialogue of Form and Characterisation: Commedia Dell’arte, Alarinjo, Pirandellian and Soyinkaesque Dramas.
  2. Olly Crick (Independent): Putting the Meta in the Physical: a Demonstration with Excitable  Explanations.
  3. Elisa Segnini (University of Glasgow): Masks across Anatomy, Anthropology, Theatre and the  Visual Arts: an Interdisciplinary Unit.
  4. Rosario Perricone and Giuseppe D’Angelo (University of Palermo): Between Puppet and Mask:  The Opera Dei Pupi In Sicilian Literary Imagination.  

16:00 – 16:30              Coffee Break.

16:30 – 17:00              Book Launch

Jo Ann Cavallo (Columbia University): Narrazioni epiche nella cultura popolare italiana:  L'Opera dei Pupi siciliana e il Maggio tosco-emiliano.  

17:00 – 18:00              Creative Writing  

  1. Pietro Milazzo (Writer): Il cane e l’avvocato (translated into English by Andra Damaschin).
  2. Lizzie Donnelly (Theatre Practitioner): A Reading From The Tight Frock Coat Adaptation For  Stage.  

18:00                           Concluding Remarks, Instructions for Paper Submission, and reception

18:00 – 19:00                 Reception