Hofstra Spring Drama Alums Land Only US Spot at Internationall Theatre Festival

Five Hofstra University drama alums are heading to Spoleto, Italy, to perform at the 10th edition of the European Young Theatre Festival later this month - the only American college students to participate in this year's prestigious international showcase and one of few in the history of the event to receive an invitation.

Tori Bogacki, Kim Bramwell, Diante Ferguson, Jack Goodman, and Arianna Wentworth, who graduated in May, will present Wentworth's original one-act play, One Little Room, written for Drama and Dance Professor Cindy Rosenthal's class, "Modern and Contemporary Drama."

The European Young Theatre Festival, which runs from June 24-28, is part of the larger Spoleto Festival dei Due Mondi, now in its 66th year, renowned for featuring artistry in the worlds of theater, music, opera, and dance.

"This is a truly unique opportunity for our recent Hofstra Drama and Rabinowitz Honors College grads," said Rosenthal. "They will be showcasing their original work and talents in playwriting, directing, performance, music composition and design before an international audience of their peers and the esteemed artists, critics and academics who attend the Spoleto Festival."

"We are thrilled to welcome the students from Hofstra University - the only American school to attend this year, and the second in the history of the European Young Theatre festival," said Giovanni Greco, professor of theatre and drama and the study abroad supervisor at the Silvio D'Amico Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome. "The selection committee was impressed and intrigued by the proposed project, One Little Room, and the whole Academy community is looking forward to seeing the production and to getting to know the students throughout the five days of the competition. We hope that this will be Hofstra's first visit of many to Spoleto and a building block for further exchanges in the future, not only with Hofstra but other of the United States' top drama departments."

Students from schools in the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, Lithuania, Romania and Scotland are also participating in the festival. The student teams will compete, with the winning performance taking home a prize of 1,200 euros, or about $1,000.

"Getting to not only continue doing the work that we love but being able to do it on an international stage right after graduating is a dream," said Goodman, who is composing an original score for the play. "I'm not sure if any of us have fully processed it yet."

While Wentworth was working with her classmates to stage an excerpt of One Little Room in drama class, Professor Rosenthal received information about the European Young Theatre Festival and encouraged her students to submit original works for consideration.

"The amazing Cindy Rosenthal introduced me to playwrights Brecht and Sarah Ruhl, who deeply influenced the play," Wentworth said. "I'm excited to dive into this piece with all the tools the Drama Department has given me, especially in terms of voice and movement techniques, costuming, directing, collaboration, and communication."

Wentworth's play is about love and the roles partners assume in their relationships. Ferguson and Bramwell play James and Susannah, a devoted couple dealing with an unnamed, debilitating illness. As the play opens, James is comforting and caring for Susannah, who is too weak to leave their small living quarters. Over the course of the story, Susannah regains her strength while James' health declines. By the end of the 30-minute play, Susannah has become the caregiver for James.

"I wanted to explore the idea of love and dismantle what we think of as a traditional relationship," Wentworth said. "This is a story which I think is closer to real life, where both partners take on responsibilities they didn't expect. They do it because they truly love each other, not just because they have to. In the end, they are two people who share one soul."

The idea for the play came to her as she was working through her own feelings about love and its power to hurt and heal.

"As a young adult in a very strange time, I've found that life's lessons on love can be brutal," she said, "and I wanted to make a play that captured that idea in a gentler way. The play is absolutely inspired by some of the joys and hurts in my own life, but in a very abstracted way."

Bogacki, co-director of One Little Room, can't wait to share the play with an international audience. "As we were working on it, I felt strongly that we should find a forum beyond campus to stage it," she said. "Then when Cindy shared the festival application I thought: here's our chance."

Finding out they'd been accepted felt like "we won the lottery," Bogacki said. "The idea of creating art on an international scale with people who I not only love but respect and admire so deeply is a dream come true."

Hofstra College and Liberal Arts & Sciences Interim Dean Daniel Seabold and Rabinowitz Honors College Dean Warren Frisina are providing grants to cover the students' travel expenses.

Rosenthal believes participating in the festival will be transformative for the students. "I think the most exciting and potentially life-changing experience for them will be the daily interactions and conversations they'll have with international cultural leaders," she said, "I know they'll make Hofstra proud."

For more information, visit the European Young Theatre Festival website.

Photo: (Clockwise from bottom left) Kim Bramwell, Arianna Wentworth, Tori Bogacki, Jack Goodman, and Diante Ferguson. Photo by Matteo Bracco.

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