ages 4-10 years

duration 45 minutes

In the context of children's theater, we felt it was important to pay homage to the Islamic cultural tradition by rediscovering the profound fairytale and symbolic values of One Thousand and One Nights. We naturally felt it appropriate to purge the adaptation for children of all the brutality of the original text, while preserving the wonderful interlocking construction of the various stories, which flow seamlessly together. Thus, the rapid sequence of the tales, almost like snapshots, makes the text easily enjoyable even for the youngest children. The show premiered in 1993 at the Teatro Stabile "La Contrada" in Trieste and was revived in 2010 by the Teatrobàndus company. The setting of the show, as in the original text, is the story of Shahrazad, the Vizier's daughter. The girl, learning that the sultan, distrusting the fidelity of women, marries one every night and then has her killed the next morning, decides to offer herself to him in marriage to put an end to this misfortune. She succeeds by telling him a story every night that will still be unfinished by sunrise. The well-known tale of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp was chosen as the common thread throughout the various tales.