INTERVIEW: Italian theater festival returns for seventh year
Photo: Antigone — A One Woman Monologue, written and performed by Debora Benincasa, is one of the theatrical offerings of In Scena! Photo courtesy of Andrew Macchia / Provided by Emily Owens PR with permission.
In Scena!, a festival celebrating the diverse offerings of Italian theater, has returned to New York City for its seventh year of programming. At the helm of the festival is Laura Caparrotti, founding artistic director who also heads Kairos Italy Theater.
Amazingly, Caparrotti and her team have made the festival free for all ticket holders, which is a small miracle in today’s high-priced world of New York theater, and the offerings are spread out over all five boroughs. Performances run through Monday, May 13.
This year’s plays are diverse and showcase numerous themes, chief among identity. As White as Fennel in Salad, from Compagnia del Calzino, played April 30 and focused on an elementary school teacher leading a boring and frustrating life. Antigone — A One Woman Monologue, from Anomalia Teatro, is a reinterpretation of the classic text that plays May 11.
For Caparrotti, pulling all of these theatrical elements together is a year-long process.
“Consider that we end the festival in middle of May,” she said in a recent phone interview. “And July 1 we open the submission process for the next year, so we have one month or two to put everything together again. And then we start again. We do two months of submissions, so people submit projects for the festival. And then Sept. 15, we close the submission, and we start looking at everything. Then by end of October we do have the lineup.”
Caparrotti said that this year’s programming excited her because the plays were so topical and important. For example, shows centered on the LGBTQ community interested her, while other offerings focused on women and the challenges of the 21st century.
“We will have other shows that are about the challenges of being oneself,” she said. “I’m excited about the lineup really. It’s a great lineup. Not that the other years it was not. After seven years, it’s like blooming every day. Also, we had a wonderful opening night. Basically, we created this project that started in February and ended with the opening night of the festival, and it was a project celebrating the Stonewall 50. Within the project, there was the showing of 13 10-minute plays on [the] LGBTQ [community], and the night of the opening there were four of the finalists. They were put on stage in a semi-staged version, and it was a beautiful night.”
Caparrotti has lived in New York City for 23 years, and in her career she found that only presenting theater in Manhattan was a bit misguided. Certainly the borough that hosts Broadway and off-Broadway is accessible for many people, but not all, and In Scena! is about bringing new people to the theater. That’s why the festival offers plays in each of the five boroughs.
“I always thought to do things only in Manhattan, you do a service for sure to the actors, the artists who are coming over, but you don’t do a service to the community because people that in the Bronx or people that are in Staten Island … they don’t travel to come to Manhattan,” she said. “Even in Manhattan, we have this location downtown and uptown because as you know people don’t really travel, some for choice and some because they are not used to it. They simply don’t do it. It’s kind of really saying, OK, I’m doing the festival not only for the artists to give them a window to New York and to present them to New York, but I’m also doing something for the community in bringing my theater and sharing the theater that I know, that I come from, with them.”
She added: “So to me this is not just a festival of art, but it’s also a festival for New York and for community. It’s really to connect.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
In Scena! continues through Monday, May 13 with a variety of theatrical offerings. Click here for more information and reservations.
