Futurist Cabarets, Artists ‘ Festivals, And Banquets

Abstract After the extreme hardship of the immediate postwar era, Italian life began to return to normal. A clear sign of this was the development in the early 1920s of a sophisticated night-life in the capital. The Futurists made their contribution to this trend by founding three nightclubs, which became the favourite haunts of Roman Futurists, Dadaists, Metaphysics, and Arditi, of artists, writers, actors, and dancers, but also of the fashionable youth and haut monde of the capital. The Futurist nightclubs were no simple ‘watering holes ‘ for the chic and fanciful inhabitants of Rome, but trendy cabaret venues where the Futurist idea of a ‘reconstruction of the universe ‘ was given concrete realization. Although the format of the cabarets basically followed the French and German model, the Futurist nightclubs were very different in their design. French and German small-scale, artistic entertainment in the cabaret mould more often than not took place in rather dingy and seedy bars, where for a few sous or pfennig one could drink a ballon or Humpen, and maybe even get it free if one contributed a sketch or a song to the evening ‘s entertainment. In the Futurist cabarets, the thespian offerings followed the formulas of the serata and Futurist variety theatre. But rather than performing these shows in traditional music-hall venues, the artists now created their own environments, where everything from the furniture to the wall paintings, from the lampshades to the colours of the cocktails was designed according to Futurist principles.