Italian male dramatists and playwrights

Vincenzo Salemme (born 24 July 1957) is an Italian actor, playwright, director and screenwriter.

Raffaele Viviani (10 January 1888 – 22 March 1950) was an Italian author, playwright, actor and musician. Viviani belongs to the turn-of-the-century school of realism in Italian literature, and his works touch on seamier elements of the lives of the poor in Naples of that period, such as petty crime and prostitution. Critics have termed Viviani "an autodidact realist", meaning that he acquired his skills through personal experience and not academic education.
Viviani appeared at age 4 on the stage, and by age 20 he had acquired a solid nationwide reputation as an actor and playwright. He also played in Budapest, Paris, Tripoli, and throughout South America during his career. His plays are in the "anti-Pirandello" style, less concerned with the psychology of people than with the lives they lead. Viviani's best known-work is L'ultimo scugnizzo (The Last Urchin) (1931), scugnizzo being the underclass Neapolitan street child. Viviani composed songs and incidental music for many of his earlier works. One such well-known melodrama is via Toledo di notte, (Via Toledo by Night) a 1918 work which even incorporates American cakewalk and ragtime rhythms to tell the story of the "street people" of via Toledo, the most famous street in Naples.

Luigi Illica (9 May 1857 – 16 December 1919) was an Italian librettist who wrote for Giacomo Puccini (usually with Giuseppe Giacosa), Pietro Mascagni, Alfredo Catalani, Umberto Giordano, Baron Alberto Franchetti and other important Italian composers. His most famous opera libretti are those for La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Andrea Chénier.

Illica was born at Castell'Arquato. His personal life sometimes imitated his libretti. The reason he is always photographed with his head slightly turned is because he lost his right ear in a duel over a woman. When silent films based on Illica's operas were made, his name appeared in large letters on advertisements because distributors could only guarantee that his stories would be used, and not that they would be accompanied by the music of the appropriate composer.
As a playwright of considerable quality, he is today remembered through one of Italy's oldest awards, the Luigi Illica International Prize founded in 1961, which goes to world famous opera singers, opera conductors, directors and authors. The prize is now awarded every two years and alternates with the Illica Opera Stage International Competition, which offers prizes and debut opportunities to young singers.

Ugo Betti (4 February 1892 in Camerino – 9 June 1953 in Rome) was an Italian judge, better known as an author, who is considered by many the greatest Italian playwright next to Pirandello.

Giuseppe Patroni Griffi (26 February 1921 – 15 December 2005) was an Italian playwright, screenwriter, director and author.He was born in Naples in an aristocratic family and moved to Rome immediately after the end of World War II and spent his professional life there. Patroni Griffi is considered one of the most prominent contributors to Italian theater and film in post-war Italy.
Roberto Rossellini made a film from his play Anima nera.
His first listed film writing credit was on the 1952 musical Canzoni di mezzo secolo. Patroni Griffi would later direct Charlotte Rampling, Elizabeth Taylor, Marcello Mastroianni, Laura Antonelli, Florinda Bolkan, Terence Stamp, Fabio Testi.
Patroni Griffi was also involved with numerous television productions of lyric opera, including Verdi's La Traviata. His many theatrical productions include works by Pirandello, Eduardo De Filippo, Jean Cocteau and Tennessee Williams. As a writer, he published a first collection of stories in 1955, Ragazzo di Trastevere. Later, he contributed significantly to the body of Italian gay literature with Scende giù per Toledo and La morte della bellezza, both set in Naples.
He died in Rome.

Gian Giorgio Trissino (8 July 1478 – 8 December 1550), also called Giovan Giorgio Trissino and self-styled as Giovan Giωrgio Trissino, was a Venetian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, diplomat, grammarian, linguist, and philosopher.

Giuseppe Adami (4 February 1878 – 12 October 1946) was an Italian librettist, playwright and music critic, he was best known for his collaboration with Giacomo Puccini on the operas La rondine (1917), Il tabarro (1918) and Turandot (1926).

Stefano Satta Flores (14 January 1937 – 22 October 1985) was an Italian actor and voice actor.

Eduardo De Filippo OMRI (Italian: [eduˈardo de fiˈlippo]; 26 May 1900 – 31 October 1984), also known simply as Eduardo, was an Italian actor, director, screenwriter and playwright, best known for his Neapolitan works Filumena Marturano and Napoli Milionaria. Considered one of the most important Italian artists of the 20th century, De Filippo was the author of many theatrical dramas staged and directed by himself first and later awarded and played outside Italy. For his artistic merits and contributions to Italian culture, he was named senatore a vita by the President of the Italian Republic Sandro Pertini.

Gerardo Guerrieri (4 February 1920 in Matera – 24 April 1986 in Rome) was an Italian film director, playwright, screenwriter, translator, theater critic, and essayist. He is particularly remembered for translating numerous plays into the Italian language, including works by Anton Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, August Strindberg, Eugene O'Neill, William Saroyan and William Shakespeare among others. His own works were avant-garde in design. He was notably the librettist for Renzo Rossellini's 1961 opera Uno sguardo dal ponte.