August marks the return of the Bruscello to Piazza Grande

In August, the Bruscello Poliziano will bring Piazza Grande, in Montepulciano, to life again, just as it has for the past eighty-three years. This year’s show, scheduled to take place from 12 to 15 August, every evening, at 9.30 pm, sees the return of the “Decameron”, first performed in 2015.

The plot. This year’s Decameron is one of the comic versions of the Bruscello and is inspired by Boccaccio’s novellas. The story is written in such a way that the ten young narrators of the Decameron become the protagonists of their own novellas, entangled in an adventure that sees them first flee from Florence to escape the plague, arrive at the convent and fall into the hands of brigands, and finally reach the palace of Pontassieve where, crowning their dreams of love, they tell each other the famous hundred novellas as they wait for the plague to end.

The roots of the Bruscello lie in the farming traditions that characterised sharecropping and life in Valdichiana. The name can be traced back to the shrub under which the storytellers recounted the exploits of characters dear to the memory of the country folk and the villages that hosted the popular festivals. There are memories of the Bruscello in Montepulciano as far back as the 19^th century, but it was in 1939 that it was renewed by the Compagnia Popolare and brought from the countryside to the cathedral parvis, making it more spectacular and using verses in slimmer metrics, accompanied by an orchestra. Comedies and dramas have succeeded each other over the years, renewing a long-standing tradition in the spirit of fun, continuing to develop this cultural wealth of popular tradition.