Beryl Hight. Un’artista trasversale nel teatro italiano

Abstract

The Dossier is one of the results of the research for a PRIN 2022. It focuses particularly, but not solely, on the Thirties, often through representative stories of women. The starting point is prose theatre, both professional and amateur, which allows for the exploration of different levels that in the context of the period appear less central, as the realisation of more or less experimental drives between dance and prose. The study branches out into different areas concerning the presence of political police; the influence, even on theatre, of the growing relations with Germany; the emergence, between the war and post-war periods, of a generation of ‘certified’ directors who had studied at the Academy of Silvio d’Amico; the female playwrights.

The essay by Andrea Scappa, Beryl Hight. A cross-disciplinary artist in Italian Theatre, shifts focus on topics that were of less concern to the specialised journals of the time, by examining the English artist Beryl Hight, who worked in Milan in theatrical and other spheres between the nineteen Twenties and Thirties. Hight created puppets, scenery and costumes, but also, together with her husband, Gualtiero Tumiati, deployed directorial skills. In retracing her work, one comes across children’s theatre, art theatre like the Blue Room and cultural circles. The article discusses this and other sectors, while trying to throw light on a relatively unknown figure who may be seen as the first Italian female scenographer, or at least, the person who brought something new to this sector.