“Sega la vecchia” is a form of popular theater with itinerant begging, played during the mid-Lent in Umbria. Companies – composed of fifteen to twenty young male peasants – move from house to house, repeating the performance until dawn and getting eggs and wine in return. In the most common regional variants, the plot of the representation is centered on the scene where the two sawyers, “cut down” and try to saw the old woman which, is at the same time an oak tree. The old husband enters the scene looking for his spouse, and then he despairs at seeing the woman wounded and “sawed”. At this point, after the intervention of the police and the identification of the responsible, the therapeutic operators (the pharmacist, the doctor, and the nurses) riding a donkey, take the stage to cure the dying old woman which, however, in some cases recovered only after the extreme unction of the priest, whereas in other cases she literally goes in the arms of “Maravalle”, the devil. The aim of our work is to preserve, protect and document forms that are dying and also think about the new conditions of representation.

The popular theatre of “Sega la vecchia” in the region of Umbria (Italy). Techniques of conservation and valorization o fan intangible heritage: dialects, sound, performances

Parbuono D
2012

Abstract

“Sega la vecchia” is a form of popular theater with itinerant begging, played during the mid-Lent in Umbria. Companies – composed of fifteen to twenty young male peasants – move from house to house, repeating the performance until dawn and getting eggs and wine in return. In the most common regional variants, the plot of the representation is centered on the scene where the two sawyers, “cut down” and try to saw the old woman which, is at the same time an oak tree. The old husband enters the scene looking for his spouse, and then he despairs at seeing the woman wounded and “sawed”. At this point, after the intervention of the police and the identification of the responsible, the therapeutic operators (the pharmacist, the doctor, and the nurses) riding a donkey, take the stage to cure the dying old woman which, however, in some cases recovered only after the extreme unction of the priest, whereas in other cases she literally goes in the arms of “Maravalle”, the devil. The aim of our work is to preserve, protect and document forms that are dying and also think about the new conditions of representation.
2012
978-88-905639-8-0
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11391/1477359
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