Carlotta Corradi Wins In Scena!'s First Mario Fratti Award for Emerging Italian Authors

The winner of the first Mario Fratti Award for emerging Italian authors, a program of the In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, will be "Via Dei Capocci" by Carlotta Corradi. The play will be staged as a reading on June 23 at 7:00 PM at Theater for the New City (155 First Ave.) as an event of the Festival.

The In Scena! Italian Theatre Festival NY (www.inscenany.com), now in its second year, is being presented by Kairos Italy Theater in all five boroughs from June 9 to 24, 2014.

In the play, Lina, an old resident of Via dei Capocci in Rome, rents out rooms to immigrant prostitutes. Here she meets Irina, a former prostitute from Easter Europe, who is looking for work as a cleaning woman. Their present situation mixes with scenes from the 1950s, in which prostitutes Viola and Mery share a room in a brothel. As the play progresses, we discover a secret connecting the women in the play.

Playwright Carlotta Corradi, already a director and documentarian, began writing for the stage in 2010. Her second written work was published by Italian publisher Editoria e Spettacolo. In 2012 she became part of a writing group led by famous Italian playwright Fausto Paravidino at Teatro Valle Occupato, Italy's oldest theatre which, since 2011, has been occupied by a group of actors, musicians, directors, technicians and creative staff who took it over when it was down due to budget cuts, and have transformed the space into one of Europe's most ground-breaking cultural venues. At the same time, she composed "Peli" which was included in the festival "Nuove Drammaturgie In Scena" curated by Rodolfo Di Giammarco. She is currently a member of the Reading Committee of the Teatro Valle Occupato, which selects contemporary theatre pieces from all over the world to be presented as staged readings within the "Orazio" festival. As part of the latter, she also directed "Homicide House," winner of the Tondelli/Riccione 2013 Award. She resides in Rome.

The winning play was selected among over 30 submissions by a jury that included Mario Fratti (playwright), Alberto Bassetti (multi awarded Italian playwright, director Teatro Lo Spazio, Rome), Emilia Costantini (theater critic for Corriere della Sera and playwright), Francesco Foti (actor/playwright), Giovanna Marinelli (theater consultant) and Ernesto Orrico (actor/director/playwright). Selection criteria were: quality of the writing (technique, style, fluidity, staging potential), originality of the subject matter, treatment of the Award's theme (this year's theme: women's languages), and universality (potential to be meaningful in an international context, easily translated etc.).

The authors submitted their plays upon the Festival's call for entries for the Award. This is the first edition of the prize, which will now become a yearly program of In Scena! and will have a different theme each year.

The play's translation will be by Laura Caparrotti, Carlotta Brentan and Dave Johnson. The reading at Theater for the New City will be directed by Laura Caparrotti, Artistic Director of Kairos Italy Theater, presenter of the In Scena! festival.

Ms. Caparrotti writes, "Carlotta Corradi's play is all about Rome. As much as it reminds us of old black and white movies, the play also reflects a situation still real in Rome. The Award committee loved the play. I am also very happy that the winner is a young woman. We still have fewer women playwrights and directors in general, so to have a woman winning the Mario Fratti Award gives me extra pleasure."

Tickets to the reading are $5 and can be purchased at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/706582 or www.inscenany.com.

Beside receiving the reading of her play, Ms. Corradi will be presented with an especially created painting made by Victora Febrer, a visual artist who uses wine to create her paintings. The award ceremony will take place on June 24, during the Closing Night, at the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, 686 Park Ave.

Altogether, the In Scena! festival will present six full productions and four readings this year. Affiliated events include a conference on supertitles. The festival also includes series of plays and readings dealing with soccer, celebrating the 2014 Soccer World Cup. All events are bilingual. For complete info and advance ticketing for events of this year's festival, visit www.inscenany.com. Most productions are $15 and most readings are $5. The toll free number for audience info is 866-207 3465.

The In Scena! Festival was inaugurated last year as an official event of "2013 Year of Italian Culture" in the USA, under the auspices of the President of the Italian Republic with the Patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Italy in Washington, D.C. Events were mounted in all five boroughs and included three full productions that were US premieres, three special events and four staged readings, all playing to full houses.

This year, the festival is presented by KIT-Kairos Italy Theater in collaboration with The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Embassy of Italy in Washington DC, The Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo', Bernie Wohl Community Center at Goddard Riverside, Calandra Institute for Italian American Studies, Dicapo Opera, the Belmont Business District Development, the National Italian American Foundation, the Arthur Avenue Market Association, The Secret Theater, The Italian Cultural Foundation at Casa Belvedere, Manducatis Rustica and KIT Italia. Media Sponsors include La Voce di New York and TeatroTeatro.it. In Scena! has the support of the Direzione Generale per gli Italiani all'Estero e le Politiche Migratorie del Ministero degli Affari Esteri italiano.