Mario Scaccia (original) (raw)

2021, Biblioteca Teatrale/Bulzoni Editore

An eclectic, visionary and ironic actor, Mario Scaccia (1919-2011) traversed sixty-five years of performing arts history as one of the most dazzling eyes on the Italian scene. An appreciated interpreter of the classics (especially Molière and William Shakespeare), he cultivated the comic-grotesque of Eugène Ionesco, Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Samuel Beckett, rediscovered forgotten playwrights of our 19th century and proposed new works by Italian and foreign authors. An authentic spirit of his beloved Rome, he was the first to make the comedies of Ettore Petrolini a success. The book traces the main stages of Scaccia's human and artistic journey, from his beginnings after the war at the University Theatre and in Anton Giulio Bragaglia's company alongside Memo Benassi, to the revue with Macario and classical tragedies alongside Vittorio Gassman. In the 1960s, together with Franco Enriquez, Valeria Moriconi and Glauco Mauri, Scaccia founded the famous Compagnia dei Quattro; he then worked at the Teatro Stabili under the direction of great directors and as an independent with his own company. His working methods and ideas on interpretation are the subject of these pages, which present an important selection of unpublished documents and a precise reconstruction of a long adventure as an actor between theatre, cinema, television and radio.