The Playwright, Marcello D'Orta / Il drammaturgo, Marcello D'Orta

Io speriamo che me la cavo (Me, Let’s Hope I Make It)

Marcello D’Orta (1953-2013) was an Italian author and elementary school teacher. Born in Naples, Italy, he is known for having written the 1990 bestseller Io speriamo che me la cavo. Sessanta temi di bambini napoletani, a collection of sixty anecdotes recounted in the voices of students that he encountered over ten years of teaching at an elementary school in the Neapolitan suburb of Arzano. Io speriamo che me la cavo sold over two million copies in Italy and inspired an Italian screenplay of the same name, released worldwide under the title Ciao, Professore! in 1992.

 

Lina Wertmüller

Lina Wertmüller was born in 1928 in Rome, Italy. She is an Italian screenwriter and film director boasting an extensive filmography, much of which engages in politically charged content. Wertmüller is best known for her films Mimì metallurgico ferito nell’onore (The Seduction of Mimì; 1972), Swept Away (1974), and Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties; 1975), for which she became the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director in 1977.

While the themes that Wertmüller engages in Io speriamo che me la cavo (Ciao, Professore!; 1992) are seemingly lighter than those of her previous works, the film unabashedly highlights the socioeconomic realities in which the children of the small town of Corzano, near Naples, live. Having become adults before their time, the children in this bittersweet comedy bring the cultural differences between northern and southern Italy to the fore in ways that are at once vulgar and charming.

 

Staging History

Due to its critical and commercial success, D’Orta’s Io speriamo che me la cavo has inspired several theatrical productions in Italy and abroad. Its most famous production continues to be the 2008 musical written by Ciro Villano and directed by Domenico Maria Corrada, which features Italian actor Maurizio Casagrande in the role of the school teacher Marcello. Villano’s script has been adapted in recent years by Italian theatre troupes such as Colpi di scena, Apparati per l’occasione, and Cast; the latter’s 2018 production was staged in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Villano’s script. Io speriamo che me la cavo was also staged in Greek by Neos Kosmos Theatre in 2010.

Maschere Duemondi is pleased to be one of the first—if not the first—North American theatre troupes to stage Io speriamo che me la cavo.