And now, for something completely different... Murder in a coffee cup!
Police! Don't move! I said don't move!
A few months ago sent me a message: would I be interested in writing a short play in Italian for her theatre lab?
She was just starting out Teatro Immediato in Perugia, and they needed material. Not that there's shortage of well-known plays available, but she wanted something short and adaptable to her group.
I jumped at the opportunity, even though I'd never written a play before — my experience working in/for theatre until that moment had been either as a production designer (scenographer, that is — not much, some Ionesco and some Chechov, plus developing a contemporary tango show production, only to see my work attributed to someone else… well, nevermind.), or as a communication expert for opera artists.
And so of course I said yes, and immediately started thinking about a story… what could I possibly write about?
I would've wanted to submit something more… elevated, perhaps? A pièce with some gravitas, perhaps even offering a social message to the audience, something of relevance… Cheryl had sent me the other two works that they would've performed, one written by her, another by another American author, and they both seemed very deep and meaningful to me. I didn't want to be beneath — not too much, at least...
Trouble is my mind was thinking Brecht, Lorca, Living Theatre, Bread and Puppet, Mayakovsky, teatro di protesta… but the impostor syndrome is always strong in me, and so I did what I always do when I think I'm a fraud in a world of Nobel Prizes: l'ho buttata in caciàra.
(if you need to know what “buttare in caciàra” means, I've explained it here…)
Write about what you know, they say…
And so I came up with some sort of a whodunit comedy thing in which a wannabe Lt. Columbo and a bunch of other characters (a couple of which stole their name from my uncle Peppe and my cousin Carlo, while another is based upon my Mum and her PhD in Malapropisms…), living in an unnamed not-so-imaginary Italian small town, go full Totò-&-Peppino for about 20 minutes because of a murder that never happened…
In Italy the famous TV detective portrayed by Peter Falk is called Tenente Colombo, and “colombo” is also the common name of the pigeon (the feminine “colomba” means dove) — that's why the main character of my play is called Tenente Allocco: “allocco” is the common name of the brown owl, but it also means idiot, fool, birdbrain…
And Tenente Allocco is totally a halfwit, although of course he believes he's smart1.
Finishing the first draft took me longer than expected, and redacting the text in order for it to fit Cheryl's requirements took me even longer, but I eventually did it, and sent her my twenty-four pages of the redux version of Caffè ristretto con delitto (Short shot with murder)…
…which will see its 🎉 *world premiere* 🎉 (this makes me chuckle every time I say or type it!), together with
's La società delle donne tragiche, and Richard C. Washer's Marte2 (Pioggia), performed by the Teatro Immediato troupe this weekend, Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th February 2025, at 5,30 PM, at Oratorio di Sant'Antonio abate in Perugia!
Alas, I'm still unable to travel, having been advised against by the orthopaedic (walking downtown for an hour a few days ago, after several months of only venturing out for therapies and medical exams seemed quite a miracle to me…), therefore I won’t be able to attend the event — I'm feeling a bit like Giacomo Puccini, who couldn't travel to New York to see the première of Il Trittico back in 1918, although last time I checked I'm not Puccini, and Perugia is closer than New York… anyway, I'm hoping the group in Perugia will capture the event on video, so that I'll be able to share it over here.
In bocca al lupo, Cheryl & Co.!
Like, really smart, a very stable genius…
Mars: that's where I'd like to send both Elonio Muschio and Donaldo Trumpo, ASAP.
Thanks for the shoutout, Giorgia, I only wish you could be here to see what fun we’re having with your play! There’s lots of interest, so I think we’ll have quite a few in the audience.