About the project

Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales (1634-1636) is best known as the Italian fairy tale collection that inspired the stories of the Brother Grimm as well as Carlo Gozzi’s The Love of Three Oranges and other influential works. Though not commonly known, it’s an important collection historically and contains the earliest known versions of nearly all the most famous fairy tales (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Puss in Boots, Hansel and Gretel, and more). But while these famous tales live on in other versions, the rest of the fifty fairy tales Basile recorded remained in obscurity… until now.

When I first started adapting Carlo Gozzi’s The Love of Three Oranges in 2001, it was the beginning of a massive research and writing project all designed with bringing these fairy tales out of obscurity and modernizing them for modern audiences. The result of all this work is multiple projects in different lengths and styles, each bringing a different part of the collection to life. Though parts of this project are still in various stages of completion, here’s the definitive list of what’s already available and what’s to come.

The Tale of Tales

I’ve taken individual tales from Giambattista Basile’s collection and adapted them into standalone one-act plays. Each play is a modernized but otherwise fairly faithful adaptation in a commedia dell’arte-like slapstick comedy style. While any play from the list below can be performed by itself and would make a great option for school drama competitions or classroom use, they can be mixed and matched into a highly customizable full length evening. Read more about performing this mix and match style play.