The Theatre E.Macri' of Acireale Acireale

Only a country withstands still: Acireale. The population of the place have the merit to have saved an ancient tradition, they are able to jump irritated on the stage to grab to the throat the traitorous Gano of Maganza (generally he is paint with strong colors, grim, dominated by the black), but above all to the pressure of the two puppet-players (who work with Sicilian puppets), respectively Mariano Pennisi and Emanuele Macrì.

Our Theater of the Sicilian puppets has been founded in 1887 by Mariano Pennisi, last descendant of a family of wandering puppet-players, that also being illiterate, he knew how to recite to memory everything Roland furious and the whole freed Jerusalem.

Under his skilled hands, the great room that welcomed every evening hundreds of howling spectators, became a real theater, and the number of the Sicilian puppets passed from the about thirty to the hundred. But Pennisi, besides the theater and to the Sicilian puppets, he has also given his successor to the Sicilian folklore, Emanuele Macrì. In 1908, in fact, not as soon as he knew about the disaster in Messina, it departed with a team of workers that they helped him for two days and for two nights under a beating rain, to exhume family of his old friend Macrì.

Unfortunately under the rubbles of the earthquake he had been alive only the small thirteen month-old Emanuele, saved by the bodies of his parents among which he had fallen asleep. Gives burial to all that people, Mariano Pennisi it brought with itself his child and he raised him as if it were his child. Only that instead of doing a puppet-player of it, it started to dream to do a professional of it. But it was a dream of brief duration, because the small Emanuele had already taken the virus of the theater, and instead of being on the benches of school, he preferred to stop spellbound in front of the forge of the Sicilian puppets.

Also having the figurehead, he confessed when he returned with the thought to the beginnings the Sicilian puppets you have always understood me, and since the times when I didn´t almost succeed in walking, they have represented my ideal world. It was not sixteen years old yet that it already took over the manoeuvres, and when in the 1936 Pennisi it died of dropsy, he did call him to ask "Swear me that my Sicilian puppets won´t die with me."
The debut happened in the month of December with a passage drawn by the History of the Paladins of France of Giusto Lo Dico, and more precisely with the episode thirty six of the first volume; where it appears Mambrino that steals the fiancée to Reynold. It was a great success, and from that evening every time that the children of Acireale saw to sprout the thick and simple figure of Mr. Emanuele, they raced to make to be narrated the enterprises of Charles Magno and his paladins. Rather it was this childish enthusiasm to convince him that the punishment was worth to face other public.

Three years later, the Sicilian puppets of Acireale appeared in their garish and pompous customs on the stage prepared in the large hall devoted to Bianca of Navarra in that of Taormina. This time success assumed the tones of the triumph, and then Emanuele Macrì convinced himself that the only way to save them, was to make to know them "in the continent". Before however in the narrow shop drawn in an angle of theater he built other fifty Sicilian puppets among which Alexander Magno, the Guelfo of Negroponte and Trabalzio and after having reached the number of 200, it started to travel.

The first one covers it was in Rome, where to the building of the exposure it enchanted both the public and the criticism, and then it went out even of Italy touching Salisburgo Bruxelles and the whole principal cities of Germany. Pushed by the wave of the enthusiasm, its fame, crossed even the ocean. Test of it both that the most greater child has been able to install a theater of the Sicilian puppets to Stony Creeck, in the Connecticut, with which he has won to the theatrical Festival of Indianapolis.

Successes came with the share to the films: The Vagabond, Air Of Taormina, Plugs And The Paladins; to television resumptions: Australia, Japan, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Western Germany, United States, Canada, England, Holland and also the Rai. A lot of tour they are followed in Europe and in America without skipping the shows for the schools and for the public to Acireale. For these we always accept the bookings to effect performances on the Chançón de Roland for tourist groups and schools; instead we periodically make some performances. Shows of Sicilian puppets, placards and painted ancient scenes by hand, these organize him both on the spot that in the other Italian cities and in foreign countries. Besides the Theater E. Macrì of Acireale, this year puts not in sale a small part of usable ancient material for the shows, among which armed pupi and not, scenes, heads and painted placards on paper to temper.