La Scortecata

by Emma Dante

freely inspired by Lo cunto de li cunti by Giambattista Basile

text and direction Emma Dante

with Carmine Maringola and Davide Mazzella

sets and costumes Emma Dante

lighting Cristian Zucaro

stage manager Gabriele Gugliara

production assistant Daniela Gusmano

assistant director Manuel Capraro

production Festival di Spoleto 60, Teatro Biondo di Palermo

in collaboration with Atto Unico / Compagnia Sud Costa Occidentale

coordination and distribution Aldo Miguel Grompone, Rome

Emma Dante — among the best-known protagonists of contemporary Italian and international theatre, Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2026 Theatre Biennale — brings to the stage one of the most celebrated tales from the collection with which, in the seventeenth century, Giambattista Basile created a masterpiece of the Italian and world literary tradition. The tale tells of a king who falls in love, deceived, with an old woman. Transformed into a splendid young girl by a fairy's spell, the “young woman” will tell her sister she had herself flayed to become so beautiful... Following eighteenth-century tradition, Dante entrusts the three roles of the sisters and the king to two men. In a space marked by only a few furnishings, with a miniature castle to evoke the dream, the two “old women”, to pass the time, stage that ancient fable — one that would teach women not to be vain, old women to keep a sense of the ridiculous, and men not to chase appearances. “A reflection on the magic and lies of theatre and on the poverty of the present.”

Renato Palazzi, Il Sole 24 Ore