In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY to Award Randi Berry of IndieSpace with 2024 In Scena! Award

In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY will bestow Randi Berry, the Executive Director of IndieSpace with their 2024 In Scena! Award for her tireless work in supporting indie theater, including international theater. Randi, the light and engine of IndieSpace, is always welcoming and supportive of anyone who is an artist with the many programs IndieSpace has created under Randi’s leadership.

In 2020 In Scena! established the “In Scena! Award” awarded by the Festival organizers to a personality in the US who has contributed to the International Theater dialogue over the years by supporting International Theater in the United States. In Scena! organizers would like to recognize the many art makers and curators in the New York community that greatly facilitate the production of international theater. 

Randi Berry is an indie theater maker and organizer with over 20 years of dedicated service to the performing arts community. As the Executive Director of IndieSpace, she oversees radically transparent, equity-focused funding, real estate programs, and advocacy for individual artists, theater companies, and indie venues. She is dedicated to removing barriers to access, coalition building and partnerships. Her leadership led to the merger of Indie Theater Fund and IndieSpace in 2022, which together has provided over $2.5M in direct funding and countless hours of professional development and real estate advisory and consulting for the indie theater community.

In Scena! also announces that playwright Rossella Fava will be awarded the 2024 Hystrio Scritture di Scena at In Scena Mentorship with her play M(o)thers. The play is selected every year by the In Scena! Organizers in collaboration with Hystrio Award - Scritture di Scena committee. The mentorship consists in mentoring the selected playwright on translation and adaptation by  an Italian American playwright, following the combined project of Kairos Italy theater and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo' to give more visibility to Italian American Playwrights on the international stage. The 2024 mentor is Crystal Skillman, playwright of Italian America origins while the translator is Giulia Cowie, the official translator for the Hystrio Scritture di Scena Mentorship. On May 8th, In Scena! will present an informal reading by invitation only during the day and a panel “On Translating, Adapting and Producing International Theater for the American Stage” at 6PM at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12 Street, New York). 

The In Scena! Italian Theater Festival collaborates with the Hystrio Award - Scritture di Scena, one of the most prestigious theater awards in Italy, to mentor a playwright on the play's translation and adaptation. The winning playwright travels to New York to work with a translator on the English adaptation of their play and a local playwright of Italian-American origins, continuing the work that Kairos Italy Theater and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU are going to give lights to Italian-American Playwrights. 

Rossella Fava Born in Ragusa, after graduating in Performing Arts and Sciences at La Sapienza University in Rome, Rossella studied acting at the Paolo Grassi Civica Scuola di Teatro in Milan. She is the co-author of the show "Hot-calls waiting" which in 2019 won the "Scintille" Award and the "La Giovane Scena delle Donne" Award. The same year she wrote and performed the monologue "Tutte Loro" which won the "Tangram Teatro'' Award in Turin. Rossella attended the permanent drama workshop at Atir Teatro Ringhiera (teacher Letizia Russo) which gave life to the show “Edipo's Family” which debuted at the Teatro Filodrammatici in Milan. With the text “M(others)” she received the nomination for the Hystrio Scritture di Scena 2023 Award consisting of a residency in New York with In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY. She combines her work as an actress and author with that of coaching for actresses and actors. Rossella collaborates with various cultural associations through a scientific, political and cultural research activity resulting in solidarity and socially useful actions.

Crystal Skillman is an internationally Italian-American award-winning playwright, fictional podcast writer, and comic book author, Crystal has written for Stories Podcast (Wondery Kids), Girl Tales, Adventure Time comics, and Marvel comics. She is the author of the critically acclaimed NYTimes Critics’ Pick OPEN which toured in four cities in Italy with Onstage! Festival last fall. New Plays include THE ROCKET MEN and RAIN AND ZOE SAVE THE WORLD. She is the author of the NYTimes Critics’ Pick plays GEEK, CUT, and KING KIRBY which you can listen to on Broadway Podcast Network.

Giulia Cowie  is an Italian-American actress and translator originally from Florence, Italy. She made her first theater debut at a young age on various renowned Italian stages (Teatro La Pergola, Teatro Metastasio) taking part in plays such as Ghosts by Ibsen, Dangerous Liaisons by De Laclos and Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare. While studying acting at the Accademia Teatrale di Firenze Giulia discovered her passion for film, getting cast in Alice's Adventures in Tuscany she got her first taste of the set. She went on to graduate from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City not long after. Recent credits include the latest season of Law and Order, Bless Me Father, Scarlet and The Mandrake Root at the Tank NYC.

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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