ABSTRACT
Antonio Fava was born on the 28 May 1949 in Scandale, a village in the toe of Italy in the province of Crotone in Calabria. Despite the family (including five sisters and two brothers) moving to Reggio Emilia in the industrial north before the end of the year, it was the cultural traditions of his birthplace that were to become the progenitors of his artistic and pedagogical identity. Antonio considers he was “born” into the Commedia tradition, thanks to his father, Tomasso, who:
worked the villages in the countryside around Crotone in the mask and costume of Puricinedda (a local Pulcinella), playing a guitar which he also beat for rhythm, enlivening local festivals with lazzi, songs, serenades, comic sketches, and outrageous comic-epic tales with cynical tragic undertones.
(Fava 2007: xvii)