During a stay in Capri in the summer of 1917 at the home of the Swiss writer Gilbert Clavel, Depero wrote three themes for puppet plays, Suicidi e omicidi acrobatici, Avventura elettrica, Ladro automatico, as well as the unfinished draft of a fourth, Sicuro, but he did not seek to publish them or stage them. The playful and colourful imagination that he deploys in them will find its extension in Depero and Clavel's Balli plastici in 1918.

Suicidi e omicidi acrobatici directly echoes the novel Un istituto per suicidi written by Clavel (Roma: Bernard Lux, 1918) for which Depero drew several illustrations.

A drunk woman starts to dance. Her husband who is waiting for her while smoking a gigantic cigar grows mad. A fight breaks out when she gets home. An earl appears followed by a dozen white dwarves. During a funeral service, the earl kills a bike rider, shoots on the dwarves, and flees on the bike. He bursts into a circus and kills all the performing artists.