Palermo (gro) Giuseppe Garibaldiand his thousand irregulars – the adventurer who, with his motley band, drove the rulers of the time out of southern Italy from Sicily and ushered in the unification of Italy 164 years ago, remains unforgotten. This is already guaranteed by his likeness on Italian 2-euro coins. in February 2014 it is a puppeteer who additionally ensures that in vivid memory remains what happened in May 1860, after Garibaldi landed on the south coast of the island, in Marsala, to roll up Italy with his faithful, so to speak, from below. “O Palermo o l’inferno” (“Either Palermo or Hell”) is the name of the drama based on Garibaldi’s slogan, which Mimmo Cuticchio wrote for his puppets and for himself, and is now performing at the Teatro Biondi in Via Roma for an enthusiastic Palermo audience.
The last real Pupparo of the island.
Mimmo Cuticchio may be the last great Pupparo of Sicily. Once it was a whole family clan that in Palermo cultivated the game with the wooden puppets weighing a good 20 kilograms, hanging on iron bars and ropes and armed with armor for generations. There were several such families in Palermo, also in Messina and Syracuse. The Puppari were not only players, but also craftsmen and showmen. They made their own puppets and provided adventurous spectacles accompanied by eerie barrel organ music, during which many an evil Muselmane was hewn to (wooden) pieces by brave Normans. Mimmo Cuticchio, who also writes screenplays and acts in mostly socially critical films, has modernized and further developed the puppet show, which otherwise has only folkloric character .
Garibaldi’s victorious march through the island’s highlands.
With his latest play and with enchanting, delicate-limbed puppets, Mimmo Cuticchio at Teatro Biondi depicts how Garibaldi marches the 160-plus kilometers from Marsala across the highlands of Sicily toward Palermo and crushes the superior force of the Spanish Bourbons with his irregulars. The special magic of the play lies in the fact that this time there is not the usual bashing and stabbing of the Puppi, but that the events are brought to the audience in the sometimes very thoughtful dialogue between Cuticchio and his puppets.