Chicago (US) - International Voices Project - On May 14, 2019 two readings from the Italian and American Playwrights Project

May 14, 2019

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

  • 6:30 PM  9:30 PM

  • Instituto Cervantes Chicago (map)

Title: A Notebook for Winter and Event Horizon

Playwrights: Armando Pirozzi and Elisa Casseri

Translator: Adriana Rossetto

Directors: John Green and Matt Masino

Collaborators: Italian & American Playwright Project

A Notebook for Winter synopsis:

A Notebook for Winter is a two-actor-piece which in three acts and tells the story of an introvert professor of literature who finds a burglar on his way back home. The knife-wielding burglar wants something unexpected from him: it is a question of life or death. During the entire night the two characters talk, exchange ideas, feelings, ask painful questions out of hope and desperation, in a completely new and unexpected atmosphere. They will meet again years later, both affected by that night. Although their personal memory of that night is different, yet it may have triggered a change in both of them, by offering a further comprehension and awareness of each other. The key idea is based on the power of writing as a way to directly impact reality: the wonder resilience of poetry is not seen as a literary exercise, but rather as a vibrant force which affects life.

Event Horizon synopsis:

Olga is stuck in a studio apartment, which has a wall with many doors and cupboards, a front door which doesn’t open and no windows: she cannot figure out what has happened, she only knows that she cannot escape. When she tries to open one of the doors on the wall, she immediately comes back from another one and continues to stay there. At some point, however, she realizes that time is messed up and that every time she leaves, she enters a different time of her life.

It turns out that the doors are a black and white hole device, which draws her own personal story into the room, including events and people she loves, as if she had been kept captured in a maze of memories.

Marco is her boyfriend but sometimes he isn’t, her father is alive but later dead, her mother left when she was a little girl but she is suddenly back. Olga struggles to understand and does not know what reality is and what she can do to change what happened and what didn’t happen. She cannot surrender to the real time, to past events, to those journeys into a grief which is too true to be science fiction.

She learnt from her father that the edge of the black holes is the horizon of the events, because it simply moves away as we get closer, which is how future works, too. You cannot fight against future by giving up on the present, you cannot deny present by locking yourself inside the past. So, when reality materializes and Olga realizes that her father is dead, that Marco has decided to leave his country and when her mother tries to ask forgiveness, she understands that the only way to overcome grief is to feel it.

So she runs away in order to learn how to get back.

The translation of Event Horizon would have been possible thanks to the involvement and support of Premio Riccione


Welcome to the Italian and American Playwrights Project new Website!

The Italian and American Playwrights Project is growing day by day and finally we are now online with our new website.
Thanks to the generosity of our donors we have managed to bring readings of translated plays to a wider audience and work with outstanding directors and actors. We are building new partnerships, with universities, colleges, festivals both in the US and in Europe.
Every contribution is essential to continue and develop this project on both sides of the “Big Pond”.

Italy/NY: A Dancing Duet - Roundtable and networking by ECS 2018 →

Emerging Choreographer Series (ECS), the project born in New York in 2013 from the collaboration between the City University of New York - La Guardia Performing Arts Center and the company "Mare Nostrum Elements" directed by Nicola Iervasi, will culminate in two fully produced performances at the La Guardia Performing Arts Center on February 26th and 27th 2018 featuring the works developed during the program.

Born as a mentoring program dedicated to emerging choreographers, the project has developed into a residency capable of providing concrete support, technical means and management guidance for the production of a new creation by the young selected choreographers who can benefit from all the technical, logistic and artistic support that the program is able to provide. This is an important and rare opportunity for young choreographers.

In 2016, ECS established a collaboration with the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome, which strengthened the international nature of the project and ensured a focus on the relationship with young Italian choreographers. For the current edition Nicoletta Serio was selected in Rome last spring. Caterina Rago, an Italian professional choreographer residing in New York City where she directs the "Caterina Rago Dance Company" will work as mentor for Nicoletta Serio during her residency.

This roundtable is organized by Valeria Orani (Artistic Director ofUmanism NY), and under the auspices of the Italian Cultural Institute of NYC in partnership with Mare Nostrum Elements. It will be an occasion to discuss the projects and fostering connections between New York and Italian art scenes, already growing in-part to the collaboration between Mare Nostrum Elements and Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome.

Mare Nostrum Element's directors will present thir international partnership with Italy and officially launch the 5th edition of the Emerging Choreographers Series, which will culminate in a performance featuring new dance works by its choreographers on February 26th and 27th.

The nine choreographers selected by Mare Nostrum Elements for 2018 Emerging Choreographers Series are: Nicoletta Serio, Hannah Button, Christopher Núñez, Ann Dragich, Dougie Robbins, Garrett Parker, Zoe Walders, Quilan Arnold, and Patrick O'Brien. They will have opportunity to share their experience with attendees, dance professionals and journalists and others.

Download ECS 2018 press release in English

Download ECS 2018 press release in Italian