Abstract

The article analyses Elvira Frosini and Daniele Timpano's play, "Acqua di colonia" (2016), which deals with the issue of Italian colonialism, challenging the dominant discourse with stage-writing and a performance capable of describing the present by plunging roots into the historical fabric of Italian society. With their caustic and irreverent theatre, Frosini and Timpano show that Italian past colonialism (and present subtle racism) are subjected to a process of repression within the country which particularly affects the everyday social field. The Italian colonial experience constitutes pages not yet integrated into the official national history of the country; they are removed, or openly denied, in the name of a myth still deeply rooted in the collective imaginary, which claims the atypicality of the Italian colonial experience as that of a «colonialism with a human face». Starting with this much-abused national myth, Frosini and Timpano flood the stage with historical facts, documents and contemporary myths, shattering the (already fragile) utopia of an Italian post-racial society.