Italian-American Playwrights at the Madison Arts and Culture Alliance

09/01/2022

The third reading in the series is Smoke Screen by Mary Ann Castronovo Fusco
on Sunday, October 30th at 3:00 pm.

SMOKE SCREEN: A SICILAIN/AMERICAN OPERA by Mary Ann Castronovo Fusco is set in northern New Jersey and Sicily in 1993. It is about an immigrant family that reunites to confront a health crisis. Drawing on lessons from the past to forge a new path forward, they discover there can be life after death.

Having given up on his American dream 20 years earlier, Nino Di Martino, a Sicilian lemon grower, returns to the United States for medical treatment and is housed once again by his sister, Sali. As this intimate drama unfolds, cross-cultural values clash, and regrets and resentments surface among Nino, Sali, and Nino’s children, Gianni and Lia. Straddling two worlds as they try to fulfill their aspirations and obligations, bound by their love for each other despite distance and differences, and struggling to express what they most need to say while they still have the breath, the family draws on lessons from the past to forge a new path forward.

MARY ANN CASTRONOVO FUSCO is an award-wining journalist specializing in Italian culture. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, to Sicilian immigrants, Mary Ann fist spoke Spanish and understood Sicilian/Italian before settling in New Jersey. Though English can be considered her third language, it is the one in which she best expresses herself. She began her editorial career after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from New York University with a BA in journalism. While working as an editor for Prentice-Hall Publishing, she earned a master’s degree in Italian with honors from Rutgers University. Inspired by authentic immigrant experiences and frustrated by the stereotypical portrayal of Italians and Italian-Americans in the media, Mary Ann first got the idea for Smoke Screen almost 30 years ago. It is her first play. Mary Ann is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and Arba Sicula, which promotes Sicilian language and culture. Some of her published work is available at www.macfusco.com.

As a writer for nationally known consumer and trade publications, I’ve explored the worlds of agriculture, art, business, design, education, entertainment, fashion, food, health, nutrition, religion, sports, and travel. I developed a particular expertise in Italian culture, and received a Distingu...

09/01/2022

The second reading in the series will be on Sunday, October 16th at 3:00 pm

Dominique Cieri's Grace Revised

GRACE REVISED: The stories of our mothers are overshadowed by our fathers, in a man’s world, where language is not the mother-tongue but rather, the father-tongue. By Dominique Cieri

Grace has always lived in the shadow of her father. In her final day of life, Grace conjures up her mother, Jeanette, and her child-self, YOUNG GRACE, and the three women take us on an odyssey from Italy to America that spans time, place and the language of her mother-tongue.

Grace Revised was one of three plays selected for the 2022 Women Playwrights Festival, Speranza Theatre Company.

DOMINIQUE CIERI is an award-winning playwright, master teaching artist, Dramatist Guild member and two-time recipient of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation/New Jersey State Council on the arts Indiidual Playwriting Feellowship. She is a graduate of Rose Bruford College in Kent, England, recipient of the State University of New York Chancellor’s Medal of Excellence for Scholarship and Creative Activities and holds an MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College, Vermont. Ms. Cieri’s plays have been produced in New Jersey, New Yor, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore and most recently at Phillips’ Mill, Pennsylvania.

09/01/2022

The first reading is on Sunday, October 9th
(Not recommended for children under the age of 13)

THE DIAGONAL TRILOGY by Vita Patrick Morales is the story of Carly, a man who grew up under unusual circumstances in the shadow of the Pulaski Skyway in the Ironbound District of Newark, New Jersey. The troubles of his childhood go with him his entire life through war and injury as he searches endlessly for peace and absolution.

The Trilogy had staged readings by the Women Playwrights Series at Centenary Stage Company in Hackettstown, New Jersey (2012) and by Women Playwrights Festival of Writers Theatre at the Jersey City Theater Center (2017). It was awarded a Gold Medal from the Italian-American Theatre of Chicago’s Italian-American Playwrights Competition.

VITA PATRICK MORALES has a BA in Italian from Rutgers University, an MA in Theater and Film from Hunter College and an MS in education from Fordham University. She is the author of more than 20 short and full-length plays, including, Francis of Assisi, The Diagonal Trilogy; Esmeralda and the Pacific Vortex, The Havana Orthodoxy, Vitiligo, Loretta the Yodeling Cowgirl and The Golden Thunderbolts. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild, ICWP and Honor Roll!.

09/01/2022

All three readings will be held at the Madison Community Arts Center (MCAC) at 3:00 pm