Theatre Production Tessitrici di fiabe (Weavers of Fairy Tales)

Location: St John's College, University of Cambridge

Organiser: The Cambridge University Italian Society and the international theatre company Ars in Fieri

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The theatre production Tessitrici di fiabe (Weavers of Fairy Tales) will soon be staged at St John’s College, University of Cambridge.

Dates: 13-14-15 March 2026

Tickets and further details are available here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/cambridgeuniversityitaliansociety/2050019

The Cambridge University Italian Society presents Tessitrici di fiabe (Weavers of Fairy Tales), directed by Ludovico Nolfi, head of the international theatre company Ars in Fieri. Freely based on Italian fairy tales adapted for the stage by Ludovico Nolfi and Elena Sottilotta, the play features a cast of native and non-native speakers performing in Italian with live English captions.

Once upon a time, in the oral and literary realm of fairy tales, stories travelled from voice to voice and from hearth to page, carrying the power to awaken fear and desire. Tessitrici di fiabe draws on the great Italian fairy-tale tradition that later spread across Europe.

The performance is inspired by Lo cunto de li cunti (The Tale of Tales), the baroque masterpiece of Neapolitan fairy tales by Giambattista Basile (c. 1575–1632), and by the great nineteenth-century collectors of Sicilian folklore Laura Gonzenbach (1842–1878) and Giuseppe Pitrè (1841–1916), whose death marks its 110th anniversary this year. Many of the tales Pitrè recorded were told to him by Agatuzza Messia, a gifted Sicilian storyteller whose voice still resonates through these narratives.

At the heart of the play stand Italian women who passed down fairy tales by word of mouth around the fireplace and within the domestic spaces of everyday life. Their stories were filled with hopes and struggles, with abductions and ordeals. Through them, they confronted the shadows of oppression and violence. Women’s courage lies at the centre of the staging, casting light on their imaginative narratives as a path towards justice and a way of reclaiming an alternative destiny.