Richard Vetere reads from Machiavelli and Caravaggio

Pulitzer-nominated playwright Richard Vetere reads from his recently published plays Machiavelli and Caravaggio, which both premiered in 2006. Machiavelli explores the Italian’s personal and political life by using a satirical style similar to Machiavelli’s own dramatic farce The Mandrake. The play poses some questions about life and art: Can there be politics without drama? Drama without sex? Sex without power? Vetere’s drama Caravaggio, which was featured in the Chicago Humanities Festival, tells the story of the great Baroque painter’s troubled life as a fugitive murder and his mysterious death on a Mediterranean beach at Port’Ercole.

“In its best moments, Richard Vetere’s Caravaggio recalls the work of Tom Stoppard in its lucid and complex dissection of such issues as religion, realism, art and romanticism. . . . the play is fascinating.”

Chicago Tribune