Rugantino comes back from a long journey and finds his home filled with Pulcinelletti (small Pulcinellas). He asks his wife where these come from, but she replies that they are their own children. Rugantino goes and sees a judge, who asks him to imagine that he owns a field and that a neighbour, crossing this field, lets wheat seeds fall on it: to whom does the wheat belong, he asks Rugantino? To me, since the field belongs to me, Rugantino answers. The judge then makes him observe that this also stands for his wife’s children. Rugantino goes back home, accepts to recognise the children, and the curtain falls as the Pulcinelletti all shout and call him “Daddy”.

Glove-puppet

Not specified

Santangelo Gaetano (aka Ghetanaccio)

Italy

Rome

Printed excerpts

Unfaithfulness

Birth

Child

Farcical

Italian

Rugantino

Rosetta

Baby

Pulcinellino

Imbroglio

[Rugantino e i Pulcinelletti]

Rugantino and the small Pulcinellas

Polichinelle has married the rich mother Gigogne, but he beats her children or gives them away in payment of his own debts. Grigogne complains to his cousin Niflanguille and gives him his bag of money. Polichinelle takes it to buy a horse. But the Maquignon sells him a dangerous horse and steals the money bag. Niflanguille accuses Polichinelle of the theft; mother Gigogne wants to beat her husband, but it is Niflanguille who gets the blows. Gigogne promises her husband more money if he behaves like a father to his children. But as soon as a child refuses to eat, Polichinelle kills him and throws him out of the window. Gigogne wants to punish Polichinelle, so he kills her, Niflanguille and a magician. The surviving children attack Polichinelle who chases them away. The Devil arrives and takes Polichinelle away.

All audiences

France

Paris

Duranty Louis Émile Edmond

Printed

Silver wedding

Debt

Money

Theft

Horse

Bad father

Bad husband

Large family

Comical

French

Polichinelle

Mother Gigogne

Niflanguille

Marchand de chevaux

Pork butcher

Arlecchino

Magician

Baby doll

Devil

Animal

Blow-with-a-stick

Lazzi

Running gag

Final intervention of the devil

Character thrown out of the scene

Characterisation through onomatopoeia

Polichinelle et la Mère Gigogne

Polichinelle and Mother Grignon

A child escapes the war in Spain on a globe. He reaches the clouds and, soon enough, the sky. He means to relate outside Earth what is happening in his country, and to ask for help so that democracy and freedom, which are being threatened, prevail in Europe. He starts a conversation with the stars, which are aware of the state of things, then with an angel, a small planet and a joyful and friendly demon. Together, they summon the stars, armies of angel warriors and legions of demons to protect the world against the evil which is tearing Spain and Europe apart.

Angel

Star

Activist theatre

Agit-prop

Spain

Teatro de Urgencia

Fantasy

Spanish

Flying machine

Las Barandillas del cielo

The Balustrade in the sky

One day, little Agustí decides to grow a tree and plants a seed. But another child, Fidel, swaps the seed with another and the resulting tree produces a very special fruit: it contains the genie Eugeni, who punishes Fidel by beating him with a stick. Fidel asks for forgiveness and the genie throws confetti and sweets to the audience.

Young audiences

Lanuza Empar de

Valencia

Tree

Ecology

Environment

Tale

Seed

Candy

Theatre at school

Mean trick

Punishment

Didactic

Catalan

Genie

Misunderstanding

Apparition of a genie

Un arbre genial

An amazing tree

On an abandoned lot, Joe talks to his puppet. He cannot bring himself to abandon it and so concludes that he must kill it. He then hits it several times with a brick. At home, his mother is most evidently drunk. She indicates a house and forces him to set it on fire. Joe then meets with his friends and lets them know what he is about to do. At that moment, Stranger, a child none of the other children knows, arrives, but he is soon driven off the lot. Joe’s friends make a deal: one by one, as the dummy is lying on the ground, they drop a brick on it and promise to keep Joe’s secret. The latter sets the house on fire. When he learns that a young boy has died in the fire, he decides to run off to Peterborough with his friends. Before they leave, a man faints before them. The children take care of him and carry him on a stretcher. Once on the road, the world seems to have turned into a wasteland. Some children begin to disappear. Some do not want to continue on carrying the man, although Joe refuses to abandon him. Others are accused of having gone to the police to tell on them. But then the man kills a child with a brick during the night. After the man murders Joe’s remaining friends, the latter is alone. Stranger comes back as a ghost and tells Joe that he has forgiven him. The man from the stretcher is in fact Stranger’s father, and he still wants to kill the child who caused the fire. The play ends with a very short scene, in which Joe says he is “the last person in the world”.

Mannequin

Actor and puppet

Bond Edward

Great Britain

London

Cambridge

Violence

Conflagration

Revenge

Phantom

Dramatic

Tragic

Fantastic

Edward Bond, The Children &amp; Have I None, 2000.

English

Ghost

Mother

Murderer

Blow with an object

Wandering

Actor speaking to an object

Massacre scene

Apparition of a ghost

Murder on stage

The Children

Les Enfants

A human narrator, Giafar the magician, addresses the audience. One of his spirits tells him that he found the pure-hearted child Giafar was looking for. Giafar needed the child to capture the powerful genie of a magic lamp. At a marketplace, the narrator recounts the story of Scheherazade to some children. Among them was Aladdin – the pure-hearted child. Giafar pretends to be his uncle, and then leads Aladdin down into an underground cave to retrieve the magic lamp. But Aladdin does not give it to him, and so Giafar abandons him in the cave. With the help of a magic ring, Aladdin goes back to his mother’s house, bringing with him many precious stones as well as the lamp. He frees the genie, who helps him and his mother earn enough money to support themselves for years. Later, as a grown-up, the Sultan agrees to let Aladdin marry his daughter, thanks to the precious stones he found in the cave. But Giafar the magician finds out that Aladdin is still alive and that he grew rich with the help of the genie. He does everything in his power to retrieve the lamp and the genie. But in the end, Aladdin defeats Giafar. The genie seals him in the lamp and Giafar is doomed to come out only to tell the story of Aladdin to children.