Un'altra stagione del teatro gay a Napoli

The work of two most relevant authors from the New Neapolitan Dramaturgy, Annibale Ruccello and Enzo Moscato, has been usually perceived through a cultural anthropological lens or has been read in the light of the Neapolitan Theatre’s legacy. Yet, the LGBT component, remains mostly hidden and appears within the numerous analysis only silhouetted through backlight (and perhaps also in the works themselves). If we consider the development of Italian Gay Theatre, without failing to consider the influence of LGBT culture from Europe and US, the work of these two dramatists takes on more coherent traits with a development of a queer drama in Italy. Indeed, one could even recognize a specific and very original innovation in this context, where the national en travesti’s practice in updated with a dramatic twist thanks to the appraisal of the Neapolitan theatre. Although not committed to the homosexual liberation movement, both authors are no strangers to its cultural influences. For example, Enzo Moscato wrote an article for the magazine «FUORI». Annibale Ruccello befriended and collaborated with Erio Masina who, in turn, represented an important variant of the female impersonator. The analysis, in this new light, of their en travesti characters, including some female figures too, does not exclude the sore poetry of marginalization but can incorporate a utopian and libertarian perspective that is rooted in that revolutionary impulse that was proper to short season of Gay Theatre in Italy.