Andrea Cioffi's APARTMENT 2B (APPARTAMENTO 2B) Wins 2022 Mario Fratti Award

In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY has announced Andrea Cioffi's play Apartment 2B (Appartamento 2B) as the 2022 Mario Fratti Award winner. The award ceremony will take place May 4th 2022 at 6PM at the Italian Cultural Institute in NY (686 Park Avenue, NY). A reading of a scene from the translation made by Caterina Nonis, will be presented together with a scene from the Mario Fratti Award winners 2020 and 2021. The full reading of the play in translation directed by Tess Howsam will take place during In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY 2022.

Named for the legendary Broadway playwright, the Mario Fratti Award has been awarded every year since 2014 to a never produced before Italian play chosen by a different jury every year, among the many plays collected through a submission process. The winner receives a translation of their work into English, a reading of such translation, the publication under the MFA theater collection and a Kairos Italy Theater production on a later date.

The Mario Fratti Award 2022 jury, comprised of honorary President, Kiara Pipino (Director and Associate professor of theater, SUNY Oneonta), Gianluca Barbadori (Director and Educator), Ettore Farrattini Pojani, (BroadwayWorld Italy), Bruna Biadotti (Actress and Director of La Scena delle Donne, 2020 In Scena! artist) and Marco De Simone (playwright, 2020 In Scena! artist), declared Andrea Cioffi's play Apartment 2B the winner for the following reasons: "Disruptive, coherent and balanced text. Lively dramaturgical dynamics and well-defined characters. An incisive and engaging writing, which gives voice to the anxieties of today's thirty-year-olds, skilfully mixing irony and depth of content."

In Apartment 2B lives Aimo, a thirty-year-old like many others: precarious work, rented apartment, unpaid bills and a disturbing vision with human features but monstrous proportions, that keep appearing around him, pills in hand, suggesting the way to go: suicide. His only contact with the outside is a shower of voice messages haunting him with deadlines and responsibilities. Nothing seems to distract him from his languishing, until the apartment door opens, letting new people, afflicted by his own mania, enter the studio and his life. Will our modern Hamlet be able to face his ghosts?

Andrea Cioffi was born in Naples in 1990. Graduated from the Acting School of the Teatro Stabile in Genoa, he has worked with several directors, including Fillippo Dini, Roberto Andò, Marco Tullio Giordana, Luca De Filippo and Carlo Sciaccaluga. He studied directing and dramaturgy with Valerio Binasco, Fausto Paravidino, Eimuntas Nekrosius and at the Paolo Grassi Civic School. With his own theater company Cercamondo, as a playwright, he won the Nuove Sensibilité 2.0 award, the Fersen Prize for Dramaturgy, the Portraits on Stage call and is semi-finalist at the Scenario 2021 Award.

The jury assigned the second and third place to Il meglio deve ancora venire by Virginia Risso and La strategia dell'opossum by Marco di Stefano.

Each year In Scena! presents a survey of the best Italian theater from Italy, in New York City. The festival features full productions that have already toured in Italy as well as readings of Italian plays in translation, lectures and exchanges between Italian and International Artists. The goal is to promote greater awareness of Italian theater and Italian artists among New York theatergoers, and to build a bridge between the artistic scenes in Italy and New York. All shows will be presented in Italian with English supertitles, unless otherwise noted. For more information please visit www.inscenany.com.