'A Munnezza or Waste: A Bilingual Edition

Waste, or ’A Munnezza, is one of Alessandro Casola’s most successful plays. Set in modern-day Naples, it dramatizes an environmental crisis that afflicts so many other modern cities: the alarming accumulation of solid waste and the peril of ignoring it. Waste in fact comes to life in this play, and along with her husband, Consumption, gains control over the entire city, reducing all of its citizens, including the mayor and his brother and members of the old nobility, to the level of servants.

This masterpiece of Italian comedy, which Casola enriches with the strategic use of Neapolitan dialect, is at once darkly cautionary and hilariously funny. Waste is the recipient of the prestigious Massimo Troisi award and has been translated into several languages.

In this bilingual edition, Carmine Di Biase provides his own translation of the play on facing pages, marking its first appearance in English.