Italian dramatists and playwrights

Giancarlo Sbragia (14 March 1926 – 28 June 1994) was an Italian actor, voice actor, stage director and playwright.

Franca Rame (18 July 1929 – 29 May 2013) was an Italian theatre actress, playwright and political activist. She was married to Nobel laureate playwright Dario Fo and is the mother of writer Jacopo Fo. Fo dedicated his Nobel Prize to her.

Antonio Petito (22 June 1822, in Naples – 24 March 1876) was an Italian stage actor and playwright. He was a notable Pulcinella performer, and an important figure of Neapolitan theater in the 19th century. Petito was the son of another Pulcinella, Petito Salvatore and Donna Peppa. It was his father who initiated him with wearing a mask during a theatrical performance at the Teatro San Carlino in Naples. Petito first performed at the Teatro San Ferdinando in 1831. Petito was not only known for his acting facial expressions, but also for his work as a playwright despite being illiterate. Unable to write well, he used assistants, mostly commonly Giacomo Marulli. After his death, the San Carlino theater remained open for only a short time, having lost its most well known performer.
Neapolitan Carousel is a 1954 Italian comedy film about Antonio "Pulcinella" Petito. In 1982, the RAI dedicated a seven-part television drama, Petito story, to him. He was the great grandfather of Enzo Petito, a character actor in Sergio Leone classic 1966 Spaghetti Western film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

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.

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.

Diego Fabbri (July 2, 1911 – August 14, 1980) was an Italian playwright whose plays centered on religious (Catholic) themes.

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.

Victor Rietti (29 February 1888 – 3 December 1963) was an Italian-born actor and director who became known through his work in television, especially through the many live television productions of the Italian play To Live in Peace during the 1950s. He was knighted by the Italian government.