An unpublished play by Lina Prosa now available in France

Les Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg announces the publication of Lina Prosa‘s play, La Leçon d’italien (The Italian Lesson), unpublished in Italy.

Inspired by the story of a Catalan woman whom Lina Prosa met in Barcelona, La Leçon d’italien is a play in which the question of cultural otherness is central and The Odyssey is an important reference. The action takes place in a small Catalan train station where Béatriu must take a train that will never arrive. The waiting time transforms the station into a place of confrontation with the ghosts of the past, embodied by the stationmaster, a staunch Francoist, and the newspaper seller, an anti-Francoist. Other characters are evoked by Béatriu, who defends multilingualism as a mark of democracy.

A new chapter in the dramaturgy of a prominent figure in contemporary Italian theatre, La Leçon d’italien occupies a special place in Lina Prosa‘s theatrical work. Unpublished in Italian, it is published here for the first time in its original language and translated into French. An introduction and an interview with the author accompany the reading of this text.