Québec playwright Marco Micone was born in Montelongo, Italy in 1945 and emigrated to Canada with his family in 1958. He grew up in Montreal and earned French degrees at Loyola and McGill. At the latter he wrote a M.A. thesis (1969) on the theatre of Marcel Dubé. His first play, Gens du silence was staged in 1980 at Le théâtre de l’Ouverture and was published in 1982. The English version, Voiceless People, premiered in Vancouver in 1986. As the first French-language play to examine the immigrant experience in Québec it achieved critical and popular success with repeated productions. Micone’s argumentative style took a feminist turn with Addolorata (1994) and a more pessimistic one with Déjà l’agonie (1988). See the bibliography for the English translations of the plays. See also the critical essay on Micone’s theatre.
All of Micone’s plays engage the polemics of Québec politics and the place of immigrants in a nationalistic society. These questions are explored in many of Micone&’s magazine articles and in his book of essays and narratives, Le Figuier enchanté (1992). Annette Hayward of Queen’s University pointed out that Micone wrote a poem that has had an important history. It is called "Speak What" and is sort of an answer to "Speak White" by Michele Lalande, at another point in Quebec history. It was published in Jeu.
As an important translator for Québec theatre Micone has adapted a number of classical Italian plays for the Montreal stage. They include Goldoni’s La Locandiera (1993) and La serva amorosa, Pirandello’s Six personnages en quéte d’auteur, and Gozzi’s l’Oiseau vert. The first version of Goldoni’s Les femmes de bonne humeur premiered in April, 2000. Micone is not afraid to give these classical plays a feminist adaptation which he did in a controversial version of Shakespeare’s La Mégère apprivoisée (Taming of the Shrew). In addition to arousing debate about the adaptations of different cultures in Québec theatre, Micone’s translations have also won several awards.
Updated February 12 2015 by Student & Academic Services
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