La Iena di San Giorgio. Da leggenda popolare a mito burattinesco

Abstract

That of the Iena di San Giorgio is a popular legend that has become part of the repertoires of several families of puppeteers. Among the plays published around the story of the murderous butcher, the one by Gualberto Niemen reconstructs, at the end of the century, the memory of the puppet show he used to take on tour in the first half of the twentieth century. It was precisely one of his shows that inspired Guido Ceronetti to make a modern rewrite of it, which became the first text performed by the Teatro dei Sensibili (1970). Also in the early 1970s, Giuliano Scabia revisits the legend to make it a mythical tale of a world destroyed by consumerism. A comparison between the two versions will show how the story, over the course of a century, is transformed from a moralizing story to an affirmation of the inevitability of evil.