MANLIO SANTANELLI
Courtesy of Manlio
Santanelli

American Premiere Presentation of Regina Madre or Queen Mother
by Manlio Santanelli (Translated by Jane House)

Join us for an evening with Manlio Santanelli, a Neapolitan and one of Italy’s finest contemporary playwrights. The ironic and engaging voice of Santanelli is widely heard in his native Italy and throughout Eastern and Western Europe and Russia, including the prestigious Avignon Festival. Santanelli first stepped into the light of European theatre with Emergency Exit (1979) which won the coveted IDI (Istituto del Dramma Italiano) and ANCI (Associazione Nazionale dei Critici Italiani) awards. Several years later, in 1984, Regina Madre was recognized as a comic triumph. In 1987, Pulcinella, his adaptation of an unpublished story by Roberto Rossellini and a tribute to the commedia dell’arte performers, came to Broadway in an Italian production directed by Maurizio Scaparro. In Regina Madre, a black comedy, a son returns home to his mother only to find himself embroiled in a tragi-comic psychic battle. The play, praised by Eugène Ionesco and translated into many languages, has been seen throughout Italy and produced in over 25 productions all over the world.

Cosponsors: Italian Cultural Institute—New York, Center for the Study of Women and
Society, and Jane House Productions.

6:30 p.m., Thursday, December 15, 2005, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Res. Code 6423. Free