Gramsci Gay | Teatro Stignani

On Friday, 10 April 2026, at 9 p.m., the Teatro Ebe Stignani in Imola will stage the play Gramsci Gay by Iacopo Gardelli, starring Mauro Lamantia and directed by Matteo Gatta.

On the night of 10 November 2019, a mural depicting Gramsci's face on the prison in Turi, Bari, where the Sardinian philosopher spent five of his ten years in captivity and wrote most of his Prison Notebooks, was defaced. An anonymous hand wrote GAY on his forehead in red acrylic paint.

Gramsci Gay is divided into two scenes. In the first painting, we are in 1920: Gramsci, not yet thirty years old, harangues the workers of Turin in the aftermath of the failure of the historic strike of the lancette. The second painting is set in the present day: Nino Russo, our fictional mural vandal, is caught in the act and dragged to the police station for an interrogation very different from what he expects. These two events, a hundred years apart, weave invisible threads about the meanings of commitment and disillusionment, trust and indifference, fire and ashes.

The show won the 2025 Franco Enriquez National Award for Mauro Lamantia, in the Classical and Contemporary Theatre category, Best Performer section.