Review Fix chats with playwright Anthony Pennino, who discusses his new production, American Italian.
About Anthony Pennino:
ANTHONY P. PENNINO (Playwright) has written numerous plays, including Chokehold, Act VI, The Land of Nod, Story of an Unknown Man, Your Love Isn’t Love, Howard Hopped The A-Train, and Iron Tongue of Midnight. His works have been seen across the United States and across the globe. He is currently a seasonal member of the Playwright/Directors Unit at The Actors Studio. Pennino holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University and a PhD in Drama from the University of London. He teaches literature and film at Stevens Institute of Technology and served as a senior lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul Turkey through the Fulbright Scholars Program. He is the author of several articles on dramatic literature as well as a book entitled Staging the Past in the Age of Thatcher: “The History We Haven’t Had”. He is currently completing a book on the theatrical work of James Baldwin.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION:
It’s the summer of 1984. Gio and Vin are best friends, first cousins, and third-generation Italian immigrants. While Gio can navigate this new world, Vin struggles to understand where he belongs. As he spirals into despair and addiction, can the love of his friend restore him to a sense of himself?
Review Fix: What’s makes this show special?
Anthony Pennino: That we are telling a story that is both uniquely specific but universal. Even though it is about a very specific Italian American family at a very specific moment, the 1980s, grappling with legacy and future, with the Old World and the New, with shifting ideas about who they are and where they belong, that family is still a family with the dynamics most families grapple with: disappointment, misunderstanding, pain, but also hope, loyalty, and love. That is why, in the title, we lead with the word American. At the end of the day, we are telling an American story. Regardless if your family has been here for centuries or millennia or joined our community in the last few years, we believe this show has something to offer you.
Review Fix: Who do you think will enjoy it the most?
Pennino: Anyone from a family that has gone through transformational changes over the past two or three generations – which is most families in this nation.
Review Fix: How has the show changed during the concept to completion stage?
Pennino: American, Italian has had a longer journey than most from concept to completion. This play is built upon another play – Italian American Cantos – SOOP produced over twenty years ago. That was larger, more sprawling, with some of the same characters, but telling the story on a much wider canvas. Paul and I had always discussed of boiling down that play down to its essentials. When that opportunity appeared this year, we took it. We were then able to zero on the core of the piece: the transformational journey our two protagonists – cousins and surrogate brothers – take.
Review Fix: Any unsung heroes on the team?
Pennino: We have so many heroes on the team from the cast – Dante, Donovan, Sara, Paul, Marc, and Isabella – to our director, Mike, but they are or will be sung. Folks not in the theatre do not realize how much a good stage manager holds a show together. And when a show is humming along smoothly, the stage manager’s work is largely invisible. So our unsung hero is our stage manager, Max Evans.
Review Fix: What are your goals for this project?
Pennino: To share our truth with as many people as The Chain can hold. And if we have a life beyond our current run, I think we would all be humbled by such an honor.
Review Fix: How would you like it to be remembered?
Pennino: One of the characters, Frank (played by Marc Romeo), has a line that we are all family to one another, that we are all strangers to one another. I would like the show to be remembered as forging a bond of family with all who see it.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Pennino: SOOP will continue its work of educating children of Pelham in this magical art that is theatre and producing plays that tell the story of the American experience. I will continue my work as playwright. That we have the opportunity to tell this story in the heart of this capital of theatre is in itself a gift. But we can hope and dream of the possibility of telling this story again in the future.
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Pennino: American, Italian is not the usual sort of play I write. This is a deeply personal story for me; there is a character in this who is “me”. And some rehearsals it is difficult for me to relive this history – I wave away my tearing up as seasonal allergies. I hope that my story will serve as a guide to people who are caught in a cycle of misunderstanding and recrimination to break that cycle.
Review Fix: Bottom line- why should someone see this show?
Pennino: Theatre at its best is a space of empathy. Why come see this show? To experience…to join in an evening of empathy.
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