Cappuccetto Rosso by Anna Cuticchio is an ecological version of the tale Little Red Riding Hood made for glove-puppets and an actor. In this show, the hunter was first played by a puppet, then by a human actor. The glove-puppets were made by Anna Cuticchio’s mother, the poster painter Pina Patti Cuticchio, using carved polystyrene covered with painted paper. Anna Cuticchio first performed this show in 1986 at the Teatro Bradamante and kept reworking it all through her career.

A little girl called “Little Red Riding Hood” is playing with her friends. Tired, she falls asleep and dreams of a little fish who is very sick because of sea pollution. Little Red Riding Hood wakes up crying. In order to comfort her, her mother gives her some ciambelle (ring-shaped pastries) and asks her to bring a tart to her grandmother, but without passing through the woods. On the way, Little Red Riding Hood meets a frog first (who coughs and has had to leave the polluted pond), then birds who were forced to migrate because the trees are burning and finally the wolf who shows her the longest route to her grandmother’s house. The wolf outdistances Little Red Riding Hood eats the grandmother and then the little girl. A hunter who has decided he would not hunt animals anymore discovers the wolf sleeping with a full stomach. The hunter extracts the grandmother and the little girl from the wolf’s stomach. Then he asks the audience whether he should save the beast or kill it. In the end, the hunter sentences the wolf to howl during each full moon and to no longer cause harm, and he asks the children to respect nature because one day they might need it.