On June 1st, 2024, a group of scholars and theater practicians from around Italy, Europe, and North America gathered in the small town of Collodi, at the foothills of the Tuscan Apennines, for a conference exploring the reasons and ramifications behind the global life of the character Pinocchio. Collodi is the birthplace of Carlo Lorenzini (aka Carlo Collodi, 1926-1990), the author of the novel Pinocchio (1883), and the title of the conference was “Pinocchio: A Global ‘Puppet’ International Symposium,” a partnership between Chapman’s Ferrucci Institute for Italian Experience and Research, the University of Iowa, and the Fondazione Collodi.
Dr. Pacchioni, who recently published studies on the history and influence of Italy’s unique popular puppet theater, collaborated on the planning and coordinating of the conference. Below is the original Call for Papers description and a copy of the program.
CFP: “Puppet theater represents an important phenomenon in Italian and international culture. Its long artistic traditions and wide dissemination have produced a vast repertoire that encompasses different genres and reworks heterogeneous forms of artistic expression. The result of various cultural influences and contaminations, marionettes and puppets, both as objects and as images or ideas, intersect a complex range of social, historical, and spiritual issues. In its being both similar and dissimilar to humans, the marionette becomes a metaphor for the modern subject and a vehicle for reflections on human existence and contemporary society. The theatrical roots of the Pinocchio character have long been known. Nonetheless, an in-depth analysis of the connections between the protagonist of Carlo Collodi’s masterpiece and the artistic tradition of puppetry deserves to be further explored in light of the most recent research perspectives, first of all in the literary and theatrical fields. The symposium aims to stimulate a broader discussion on puppets and marionettes’ historical, aesthetic, and psychological valences and the relationship between Pinocchio’s theatrical nature and global fortune. These intersections will provide novel perspectives to appreciate the numerous reinterpretations of the well-known Collodi book and the figure of Pinocchio as a character capable of transcending national boundaries.”
