Trinacria Theatre Company Presents Inaugural Production, LA STORIA DI COLAPESCE

Trinacria Theatre Company presents its inaugural theatrical production, La Storia di Colapesce at INTAR Theatre. The production is an original piece created and devised by the company during a 4-week residency in Sicily, at the Istituto San Placido Calonerò in the Messina region of Sicily. The cast of La Storia di Colapesce is comprised of an ensemble of eight American theatre artists. The Trinacria Theatre Company's mission is to use theatre as a tool to promote Sicilian history, heritage, and culture at home and abroad.

Company members reimagine the Sicilian folk legend of Colapesce, the tale of a fisherman's son from Messina who spends so much of his time diving beneath the waves that he is said to be half-man, half-fish. News spreads of Colapesce's incredible ability, and eventually reaches King Frederick the II of Sicily, who decides to put Colapesce's powers of diving to the test. The King repeatedly sends Cola to the ocean floor, where he finds terrible things lurking in the deep, threatening to destroy the city of Messina. Trinacria Theatre Company reinvents this classic fable using a wide variety of theatrical story-telling techniques and conventions.

The bilingual performance was developed during a month-long residency in Sicily, during which time company members lived, worked, studied, and rehearsed at the Istituto San Placido Calonerò, in partnership with the Enoteca Provinciale Messina, two organizations dedicated to the promotion and preservation of local Sicilian heritage.

From August 16 - 20, La Storia di Colapesce is also to be performed completely free of charge for the Sicilian public in five touring locations in the region of Messina: Piazza San Nicola in the village of Pezzolo; the Museum of Sicilian Clothing & Fashion in the town of Mirto; the Church of St. Stefano in the village of Santo Stefano Briga; the Istituto San Placido Calonerò; and the Castle Rufo Ruffo (built by King Frederick II) in the village of Scaletta Zanclea. The performance will also be toured to Boston where it will be performed at the Watertown Sons of Italy, Langone Park in Boston's North End, and St. John's Episcopal Church in Gloucester.

New York performances take place at INTAR Theatre, 500 W 52nd Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10019. Subways: A/C/E/1/2 to 50th St

The cast features performers from both Boston and New York, including Josephine Cooper, Sean Devare, Quinton Kappel, Elena Kritter, Mariagrazia LaFauci, Kathleen Lewis, Dario Sanchez, and Max Sklar.

Suggested ticket prices are $18 general admission, $15 students and seniors, and $10 for Sons of Italy members. All ticket prices are recommended, and admission is on a pay-what-you-can basis.

Show Dates:

Wednesday, August 24th at 7:30pm

Thursday, August 25th at 7:30pm

Purchase tickets in advance here: http://lastoriadicolapesce.brownpapertickets.com

More info is available at www.trinacriatheatre.com.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/TrinacriaTheatre

Instagram: www.instagram.com/trinacriatheatreco

Josephine Cooper (Performer) is an artist who is passionate about the collaboration process of theatre! Josephine studies acting and directing at Emerson College in Boston. She has recently performed in a workshop performance with director Thaddeus Phillips of Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, and starred in many other plays at Emerson. Last year, Josephine began to explore devised theatre by working with a group of artists and maintenance workers at Emerson, to create a devised piece about their lives and journeys to the US in their own voices. Last summer, Josephine performed in the world premiere of a new play for the NYC International Fringe. She also works in TV and film, having recently been in a new mini-series for Comedy Central created by Ilana Glazer of Broad City, and is currently nominated for Best Actress at The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival for March.

Sean Devare (Performer, Community Engagement Co-Chair) is a NY-based multi-disciplinary theatre artist, designer, and avid traveler, previously working abroad with Dell'Arte International (Bali) and Dramatic Adventure Theatre (Ecuador). He was a resident actor at The Flea where he appeared in The Cutthroat Series and '#serials@theflea.' Other NY credits: The Saltmakers (Dixon Place/HERE); 'Artaud Artaud' (Signature/Columbia); The Tutors (The Kraine). He studied theatre at Brown University where he created an original solo show, Into the West, featuring his own mask and projection designs. Sean specializes in mask design and physical theatre, and is working on a new adaptation of the Grimms' Juniper Tree featuring original archetype masks and puppets integrated through devised theatre. He has created masks and props for INTAR Theatre, The Ume Group, and Underling Productions. Training includes: Movement Theater Studio, Old Trout Puppet Workshop, and Per Brahe. BFA in Illustration, RISD. Sean will be pursuing an MFA in Theatre this fall at Sarah Lawrence. www.seandevare.com

Quinton Kappel (Performer, Marketing Director) is a visual artist, filmmaker, performer, designer, and jack of all artistic trades. He received his BFA in Film & Illustration from Tufts University together with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. His work strives to integrate his passion for performance with visual and digital mediums of storytelling, in areas as wide-varied as gallery spaces, video game development, visual effects, performing arts, production design, set design and more. Favorite roles include Hamlet, Steindorff (Bach at Leipzig), Mercutio (Romeo & Juliet), Claudio (Much Ado About Nothing), Hanschen (Spring's Awakening), Lancelot (Spamalot!), and Orsino (Twelfth Night). His professional voice work includes clients such as Dunkin Donuts, ESPN, Warner Brothers, Jersey Jack Pinball, and more. As a film maker, he has filmed, edited, animated, and directed a wide variety of projects, and as a producer, his work includes nationally syndicated commercials for clients such as Dunkin' Donuts, LG, Chili's, Bank of America, Great Wolf Lodge, ESPN, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Capella University. His viral YouTube video, "105 Impressions," was featured in the Huffington Post and Yahoo News, while the first episode of his web series "We Have a Dinosaur," earned over 2.5 million views on YouTube. www.quintonkappel.com.

Elena Kritter (Performer, Producer) is a New York City based actor, director, producer and personal trainer. From studying Shakespeare in Oxford, England, playing with Balinese masks in New York City, and producing off-off broadway plays, Elena brings a broad a spectrum of knowledge and experience. She believes that "to theatre", allows for a necessary cyclical process of growth in self and community. She is excited to work with her fellow artists in Trinacria and together become apart of that cyclical event between countries, stories, and people. Recent credits include The Drunken City (Battalion Theatre), As You Like It (Shakespeare on the Sound), and 'Adara' in Kasuba Mukuka's short film, The Dark Room. Elena completed the 2-Year Full Time Meisner Training Program at the William Esper Studio, BADA's Midsummer at Oxford Program, The Maggie Flanigan Studio's Summer Intensive, and received at B.A in Theatre from Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. www.elenakritter.com

Mariagrazia LaFauci (Performer, Artistic Director) was born and bred in Boston, but raised with Italian as her first language and Sicily as her second home. The daughter of two Sicilian immigrants, she graduated from Brown University in 2012. During her senior year, Mariagrazia wrote and performed Alexandria, a solo show dealing with the heritage, history, mythology, and "ghost stories" of her Sicilian upbringing. Following graduation, her work has focused on directing (favorite credits include Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo, Bach at Leipzig, Doubt: A Parable, and Twelfth Night) and theatre education. She has taught in a variety of locations including Saint Joseph Preparatory High School (where she helped create the school's first academic theatre arts program), Stoneham Theatre's young company, Jammin' With You!, the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston, and more. Trinacria Theatre Company evolved out of Mariagrazia's artistic desire to use theatre to address, explore, and discuss issues of cultural memory in global communities. In the fall, she will be studying at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in the Masters Directing program. www.mariagrazialafauci.com

Kathleen Lewis (Performer, Company Manager) is a Boston-based actor that hails from north country Maine, where she studied theater arts at Bowdoin College. She is currently devising a project using Bavarian Fairy Tales with a group of experimental physical theater artists from Boston, NYC, and Maine to be showcased in 2016. Her most recent performance was as a rapping, dancing, 90's clad lesbian in Gina Youngs's, Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo. Before that she was an intergalactic hacker for Kevin Mullins's space opera, Citizens of the Empire. She is a member of Beau Jest Moving Theatre, a Boston-based physical theater company that finished touring an original film noir play titled Apartment 4D in February. She has had the pleasure of working with a number of Boston theater companies including Boston Public Works, Flat Earth Theatre, Post-Meridian Radio Players, Fort Point Theatre, and Boston Bohemia to name a few.

Dario Ladani Sanchez (Performer, Co-Community Engagment Chair) is entering his final semester at Northeastern University, where his studies have focused on rhetoric, theatre, and Portuguese. From Washington, D.C., Dario is the first person in his family to be born in the United States, and will be the first to finish college... unless his dad beats him to it with those sneaky online classes. In addition to acting, he loves playing music, screwing around with martial arts, pretending to have a unique fashion sense, and eating his way through Boston. Theatre roles include Peter in The Heidi Chronicles, Alejandro in Welcome to Arroyo's, Prep in columbinus, and David in A Wake for David's F*cked-Up Face (his first time performing in New York!); he also starred in the Emmy award-winning webseries Paper Trail.

Max Sklar (Performer, Dramaturg) is a local actor based in Salem MA. He received his BA from McGill University. He is currently a cast member of Othello in the Seraglio (Meddah) with Dünya, Cry Innocent: the People Versus Bridget Bishop with History Alive!, and The Diary of Perpetua (various roles) with Still Small. Past credits include Love's Labour's Lost (Costard), Macbeth (Ross), A Trolley Christmas Carol for the Griffen Theater in Salem, and performances in Puglia Italy for the Orlando Innamorato Festival; Il Viaggio Segreto (Giuseppe Verdi), and La Terra Promessa (Il Funzionario). College productions include All's Well That Ends Well (Dumaine lord 1), Ben Johnson's The Alchemist (Abel Drugger), and Timon of Athens (Poet, Ventidius, Caiphis, and Senator). Apart from acting, Max is passionate about languages and translation. He is a tour guide, and works as the foreign language tour manager for Cambridge Historical Tours. He is also an amateur Old Time music player and plays the Mandolin and the Bandoneón.

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