Mastodascia

Recommended age 14+ | Contains adult themes.

Adapted from the classic Scottish play Sailmaker by Alan Spence, Mastodascia is set in the 1980s in the Rione Sanità, a working-class district in Naples. The young Alessandro is grieving the loss of his mother, while his father Michele – previously a competent and self-assured mastodascia (carpenter) – succumbs to the self-destructive cycle of drinking and gambling.

Alessandro is determined to pursue an education. Yet, he must navigate the double consciousness arising from his moving between the Italianate linguistic spaces of school and church, and the ghettoised linguistic spaces of working-class Naples. In this navigation, Alessandro hopes to follow a different course from the internalised racism of his uncle and cousin, who embrace football chants depicting Neapolitans as backward and sub-human.

The key to saving Alessandro’s father and Naples from coming undone may lie in fixing an old wooden cart.

Mastodascia is presented in a bilingual stage reading format (Neapolitan with English translation).

With Derrick McClure, Patrizia Vitiello, Neil McClelland, Maria Vitiello and Massimiliano Canzanella.

Massimiliano Canzanella is the author of the first novels in the Neapolitan language L’î ’a vulé (Set your soul to it) and Nun me dìcere niente (You don’t say).  www.canzanella.net

_{Mastodascia is produced with the contribution of COMITES Scotland and Northern Ireland}