In our theatre there are no good guys and bad guys, no minor and lead characters: there is the size and strength of the chorus, and when there is guilt, the guilt itself is gigantic and has an absolute value, like justice. Each character is good and terrible at the same time; everyone has an assassin deep inside.
—Franco Scaldati, Sonno e Sogni
From the 1970s until his death in 2013, writer and actor Franco Scaldati exemplified an admirable course of artistic development for many young practitioners of theatre, and yet his work was largely ignored by local and national cultural institutions as well as by critics, who revealed themselves incapable of making sense of it in terms of the Italian theatrical tradition as they understood it. Perhaps the most immediate reason for this is that most of his work is written in Sicilian dialect, specifically that of Palermo. With...