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Glove puppetry show with Gianluca Di Matteo and Irene Vecchia at Ciné-Parc Dante

This year, thanks to the support of the Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal, a puppet show will be offered on the occasion of the first evening of the “Italian cinema outdoors at Park Dante” on July 4. The show will feature the two artists Gianluca di Matteo and Irene Vecchia, who came directly from Italy for the occasion.

4 July 2018
Parc Dante
219 Rue Dante, Montreal, Quebec

The “guarattelle” shows are the Neapolitan puppet shows par excellence and are an ancient oral heritage of theatrical wisdom. The etymological meaning of guarattella, a Neapolitan dialect term, indicates “a situation that although it is very simple is easily made very tangled“. Drawing from ancient canvas, shaping the show on the public, improvising in the chronicle, staging new ideas, the shows of Pulcinella are always funny, irreverent, cathartic and animated by an unstoppable rhythm. Even though we know the story of Pulcinella, the desire to see the show again is renewed at every staging: in the puppet theatre there are no passive spectators, there is action and involvement. For 500 years this tradition has been stratifying and finding new expressive forms, for 500 years puppeteers have met their public, and enliven their days with battles of sticks and daring escapes. For 500 years, despite all his mishaps, Pulcinella has never died.

The careful manipulation, the strength of the gestural language and the pressing rhythm are the heart of the Pulcinella that Gianluca Di Matteo and Irene Vecchia have been staging for years with their traditional shows of Neapolitan puppets.

Gianluca Di Matteo, trained at the Neapolitan school of puppet theater, stages traditional canoeing and puppet shows and shadows of his creation. He works abroad as a guest at puppet festivals and theatres specializing in figure theatre, collaborates with the Italian Cultural Institutes and conducts theoretical and practical workshops on the art of guarattelle and shadow theatre. He builds sets for himself and other companies, works as a theatrical stage designer and his wooden carved puppets are exhibited at the Centre for Puppetry Arts of Atlanta.

Irene Vecchia began her puppeteer/guarattellara activity in 2002 with the conclusion of the “Scuola delle Guarattelle”, the first training experiment for puppeteers in the Neapolitan tradition. She continues her training by attending courses and seminars as an actress and puppeteer, in 2010 she graduated in Visual Arts and Discipline of Entertainment at the course in Stage Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. She presented the performances of guarattelle in very different environments: from the streets of Naples, to international festivals of theater in Italy and Europe. She has received national and international prizes and awards.

  • Organized by: Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montréal
  • In collaboration with: Associazione Petite-Italie Marché Jean-Talon