Wednesday, October 25, 2023. 6:15pm EDT. The Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room, Columbia University, NY. The Sicilian Puppet Theater of Agrippino Manteo (1884-1947): The Paladins of France in America By Jo Ann Cavallo.

Sicilian puppet theater is a unique nineteenth- and twentieth-century popular theatrical tradition based on the masterpieces of medieval and Renaissance chivalric literature. It flourished not only in southern Italy and Sicily, but also in the diasporic Italian urban communities of North and South America and North Africa, bringing immigrants together for nightly performances of the same deeply cherished chivalric stories.