Teatro Del Loto Performs Arturo Giovannitti’s “The Walker”

When: Friday, November 23, 2012, 7:00pm.; doors open at 6:30pm

Where: Everett Mills ? 15 South Union Street, 6th floor, Lawrence, MA.

One night only! Straight from performances at Yale University and City College in New York, an extraordinary play will make just one appearance in Massachusetts: Stefano Sabelli’s THE WALKER’S AUTO-DA-FÉ. This original Italian dramatization for stage, performed here in English, is based on Arturo Giovannitti’s poem The Walker and his remarkable address to the jury at the end of his 1912 trial as accessory to murder in the death of striker Anna LoPizzo. Performed first in Giovannitti’s hometown in Italy, the theater company is excited to be doing their final US show in the Bread and Roses Centennial Exhibit at the Everett Mills in Lawrence, MA, just two blocks from where Anna LoPizzo was felled by a militia bullet.

Limited Seating. Call for reservations. For further information call the Lawrence History Center: 978-686-9230.

On the 29th of January 1912, Joseph Caruso, Joe Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti were arrested for their alleged role in the death of striker Anna LoPizzo. They spent ten months in jail while waiting for their judgment, which could mean death in the electric chair. While all over the world there were protest marches for their freedom, Arturo Giovannitti, a young poet and trade-unionist from Molise, Italy, composed several poems in jail. One, titled “The Walker”, forms a part of the play’s structure. The play also centers on “The Address to the Jury” delivered by Giovannitti on November 23, 1912 in a Salem, MA court room.

A blockbuster judicial case at the time, the trial was watched the world over. One hundred years after that trial, with THE WALKER’S AUTO-DA-FÈ, members of the audience relive that event through stage fiction, putting themselves in the shoes of the jury selected to judge Giovannitti, Ettor, and Caruso.