Theater in Italy is very old, dating back to the ancient Roman and Greek times. The concept of theater in Italy is one of movable theater and till today there are traveling theaters in Italy. It is hard to find a theater company that can be said to be stationery in any one town in Italy. Goldoni is considered to be a great in Italian theater who staged some great dramas. In the later half of the 19th century, modern theater started to take roots in Italy. The plot in these dramas revolved around family life with adultery being the central theme. Misunderstandings and lack of communication between husbands and wives dominated the theater scene around this time. It was around this time that another great of Italian theater, Pirandello came on the scene and revolutionized the concept of theater. He introduced characters in dramas that revealed their inner self and took off the mask which had become a bane of Italian theater. He is also credited with a marvelous innovation called theater within theater.
As there were many dialects in Italy and very few could speak proper Italian, it was common to see the theater in local dialects in Italy. No other place but Naples demonstrated this fact more lucidly. The dramas staged by De Fillipo brothers in Naples became very popular which had poor and lower class families of Italy as their central themes. The dramas were full of daily life situations and were greatly appreciated by the audiences of that time. Eduardo at this time wrote dramas that voiced concerns of the oppressed and the downtrodden. The characters came from the edge of the society and the audience found it easy to relate with them.
Giorgio Strehler is the man who is considered to be the father of modern drama in Italy along with Luchino Visconti. He was a great director who revolutionized the theater scene and his influence is still felt in the drama circles of Italy. Some other prominent figures who shot to fame in the 1950’s were Luigi Squarzina, Mario Missiroli, Giancarlo Cobelli and Aldo Trionfo. These were great directors who have left an indelible mark on the theater of Italy. The seventies and eighties saw the towering figures of Luca Ronconi Massimo Castri.
Yhe spirit of theater is still alive and kicking and there are some names that are famous all across Europe for their skills in the field of theater. The most prominent among these are Luca De Fillipo and Dario Fo. Dario also won the Nobel Prize for literature and is still active in the field of theater in Italy. Fo’s dramas have won critical acclaim for their criticism of the political system and he is also critical of the social system in Italy. Among the most famous of Fillipos dramas was a play called Saturday, Sunday and Monday which dealt with the problems faced by common man in Italy. Fillipo translated many plays into Italian and his contribution to theater in Italy can never be forgotten.