IN SCENA! ITALIAN THEATER FESTIVAL NY Reveals Lineup For 2025 Festival

The New York City-based Kairos Italy Theater along with the Italy-based KIT Italia and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU will present the 12th annual In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, New York City's premiere festival of Italian theater taking place in all five boroughs of NYC (with the full schedule of events and venues to be announced), May 5-19. Admission to all shows and events in the festival is FREE. Shows will be performed in Italian with English supertitles or in English. .

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 City theatergoers, and to build a bridge between the artistic scenes in Italy and the US.

ALFREDINO, ITALY IN A DEEP WELL

(ALFREDINO. L'ITALIA IN FONDO A UN POZZO)

Written & Performed by Fabio Banfo, Directed by Serena Piazza

Presented by Centro Teatrale MaMiMò

On the evening of June 10, 1981 six year old Alfredo (Alfredino) Rampi fell 36 meters deep into a well in Vermicino, a village near Rome. In the next 35 hours, Italy was glued to the TV watching the first non-stop live broadcast to cover the attempt to save him. It was a turning point in the history of Italian TV, which is still studied in journalism schools and where the modern sensationalist way of dealing with news was born. Fabio Banfo brings the story back to life, introducing in his solo show the many characters that filled that night: the first journalist who rushed to the scene, the sandwich seller who profited from the attending crowd, President Pertini, the robots Mazinga and Grendizer, which Alfredino was passionate about, the policeman who spoke with him for hours to try to reassure him and give him hope, Angelo Licheri, who remained for forty minutes hanging upside down in the well, trying to save the child. At the core of the narration there is Alfredino, in that deep well together with the entire country. Best Direction Fersen Award 2021, Best Show and Best Dramaturgy Doit Festival Rome 2017. Running Time: 60 min

AMARA SAPIENZA To my mother

Written & Directed by Giulia Bocciero

Performed by Giulia Bocciero & Alice Camoriano

A performance that explores the work and life of Italian writer and actress Goliarda Sapienza starting from the mother-daughter relationship. The scene is a paper corridor inhabited by two women: while one performer embodies real and fictitious figures from the Sicilian author's universe, the other transcribes Sapienza's poem To my mother by hand. Daughter of anarchists, Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996) lived intensely without ever aligning herself with the culture of her time. Her childhood in Sicily, the exile, the theater and cinematographic career, fascism, psychoanalysis, imprisonment, homosexual love, the oblivion caused by the lack of recognition of her works in life are pieces that fit into the discourse and, intermittently, appear as if evoked, bringing with them encounters, thoughts and sensations. Finalist at the International Dramaturgy Award Carlo Annoni 2024. Running Time: 50 minutes

IN THE NAME OF MARY (NEL NOME DI MARIA)

Written by Chiara Gambino, Directed by Claudio Zappalà, Original Music Domenico Gargano, With Chiara Gambino and Alba Sofia Vella

The show is inspired by and rewrites a mafia story that occurred in Palermo on November 14 1982 and which led to the death of the young Sicilian policeman Calogero Zucchetto, who in that period was working with the Palermo Mobile Squad in the search for mafia affiliates. The point of view of the show is the one of his girlfriend Maria Lo Bello, tormented in the years following the loss by the question: "Could it have gone differently?". For the entire duration of the show, the protagonist responds unaware to this question, with a true and ironic, fragile and disenchanted stream of consciousness, recounting the meeting and pursuing the love that led her to get engaged to Calogero (Lillo for friends) Zucchetto. Mauro Rostagno Award 2021 for Best Script and Best Actress - DaSud special award for the fight against mafias, Last Summer Moon Festival 2021, Special Mention Città Laboratorio 2021, Franco Delivery Official Selection 2020, Official Selection Catania Fringe 2022. Running Time: 55 min

LAMPEDUSA BEACH
Written by Lina Prosa, Directed & Performed by Nadia Kibout and Daniele Onorati 
Shauba, a young African woman, recounts her difficult experience: the dreams and hopes that led her to face a long and dangerous journey that were shattered off the coast of Lampedusa. Nadia Kibout presents a solo show on migration accompanied by the soundscapes of Maestro Daniele Onorati and his oodoo, very special ceramic musical instruments. Running Time: 50 minutes

LIKE AN OCTOPUS IN A GUITAR (COME UN POLPO NELLA CHITARRA)

Written by Marco Ziello, Directed by Licia Amarante and Marco Ziello

Performed by Annachiara Castorino, Gerardo D'Amato, Francesco Del Gaudio, Sabrina La Regina, Paola Santamaria & Marco Ziello

Presented by ON Teatro Formazione Cultura

When the protagonist of "Like an Octopus in a Guitar" decides he no longer wants to leave the house, he develops an obsession with Death and begins to spend his days imagining his funeral. A funny and absurd journey inside the mind of an individual who is slowly losing his memories, where the actors' bodies become a metaphor and instrument for remembering. In this suspended world, in which even the names of the characters have been forgotten, dream and reality merge to tell the story of a man's internal battle. A battle between the desire to heal and the temptation to remain, forever, playing with Death. Best Drama 2024 at Roma Comic OFF. Running Time: 70 min

MY MAMA NOTARIZES & ALSO MAKES RISOTTO

(MIA MAMMA FA IL NOTAIO, MA ANCHE IL RISOTTO)

Written & Performed by Filippo Capobianco

Presented in collaboration with Dominio Pubblico

"Mia mamma fa il notaio, ma anche il risotto" is the first show by the 2023 Poetry Slam world champion Filippo Capobianco. The performance combines the languages ??of Teatro Canzone (an expressive genre related to theatricality, speech and music, consisting of alternating songs and monologues or, more precisely, sung and acted parts) and performance poetry in a narrative that tells the coming-of-age story of a Generation Z boy in search of his own voice in a world that he will only gradually understand. Moscerino doesn't know how to talk to his mother and there's no way his mother, an important and always busy notary, would talk to him. The desire to communicate, in every way and by every means, accompanies him over the years, from story to story. Poetry is the last key to allow Moscerino and his mother to finally look each other in the eyes. Winner of the FringeMi Festival 2024. Running time: 50 min

THE PERKY THERESAS (LE VISPE TERESE)

Written & Performed by Alessio Piazza

The author retraces his childhood through the stories of three aunts, conversing with them in the places and with the words that emerge from memories, and which merge with the personal memories of the spectators. A story of a family told with modesty by one of the family's members where places, facts and people are a mixture of reality and fantasy, between personal anecdotes and others told or heard from other family stories. Inspired by the literary atmospheres of the book "Family Lexicon (Lessico Famigliare)" by Natalia Ginzburg and the cinematographic atmospheres of the iconic movie "The Family (La Famiglia)" by Ettore Scola. Running Time: 60 min

THE POPESS: INSTRUCTIONS FOR FREEDOM

Written & Performed by Elena Mazzon, Directed by Colin Watkeys

Italy 13th Century - the Guglielmites heretical sect causes havoc in Milan. Their leader, Guglielma of Bohemia, believed to be the second coming of the Holy Spirit, appoints Sister Maifreda, as her Popess. and together heralds a new female-led era, where only women could save humanity from eternal suffering. It did not take long for the inquisition to find out about the congregation and its beliefs. The Popess is a dark comedy solo-show, which unravels the mystery of a true early feminist movement in the Italian misogynistic religious history, investigating the discrepancies between religion, faith and power and, ultimately, the meaning of freedom. Official Selection 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Performed in English. Running Time: 55 min

In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY In 2013 Kairos Italy Theater, the preeminent Italian theater company in New York City, together with the Italian KIT Italia, created In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, the first Italian theater festival to take place in all five boroughs of New York City and beyond. The festival's first edition was part of the 2013 Year of Italian Culture in the United States and it was supported by the Embassy of Italy in DC and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo' at NYU that became right after one of the organizers. The festival has since become an annual event. www.inscenany.com

 

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