A theatrical adaptation of Pinocchio: La ballata di Pinocchio

Pinocchio is the puppet/marionette in whose physical form we can most clearly trace two important strands in theatrical culture, meeting in an intertwined combination. On one hand, there are the traditions of popular culture, reaching back to the Commedia dell’Arte , encompassing Debureau’s naturalistic inscription of classic pantomime in nineteenth-century France and superbly revived in the twentieth century by Marcel Marceau. On the other hand, there is a more highbrow strand, beginning with Heinrich von Kleist’s article on marionettes (1810) that later gives rise to Gordon Craig’s super-marionette and to Étienne Decroux’s body mime. Pasquale De Cristofaro appropriately acknowledges these two strands in his theatrical adaptation of La ballata di Pinocchio , a rewriting in verse and prose of Collodi’s Pinocchio by Luigi Compagnone. The article focuses on De Cristofaro’s production but also on Compagnone, the writer of several extraordinary rewritings of Pinocchio .