Italian and American Playwrights Project

Join the Segal Center Italian and American Playwrights Project for an evening discovering the work of one of the most significant contemporary Italian playwrights, screenwriters, and directors: the late Mattia Torre. Born 1972 in Rome, Torre died prematurely in 2019. 

“Mattia Torre is like Eduardo De Filippo—a great investigator of our miseries and above all reminds us that certain miseries can be loved,” declared Paolo Sorrentino, Italy’s Oscar-winning movie maker, who filmed Torre’s most famous work for the stage for Italian television: Six Easy Pieces. The reading of excerpts from the plays, translated by Anthony Sugaar, were directed by Kristin Leahey. Followed by a panel with Italian theatre critic Graziano Graziani, translator Anthony Sugaar, Valeria Orani, and others. Moderated by Frank Hentschker.

Graziano Graziani is a theatre critic, writer, and journalist. He’s a cohost of Fahrenheit on Radio 3 Rai and he has written for numerous papers (favorite credits are Lo Straniero, Internazionale.it, the blog of Minimum Fax minima & moralia and the new Treccani webzine, il Tascabile). He collaborates with Rai 5 for which he created many documentaries on contemporary theatre. He has published various books, last of which was Atlante delle Micronazioni (2015) by Quodlibet editor. He curates a blog named Stati d’eccezione.

Antony Shugaar is a writer and a translator from the Italian and the French. He’s translated dozens of articles for the New York Review of Books and close to forty novels for Europa Editions. He has translated many novels that were awarded Italy’s highest literary award, the Strega Prize (the 2011 winner, Edoardo Nesi’s Story of My People, Resistance Is Futile, by Walter Siti, Francesco Piccolo’s Wanna Be Like Everyone, Ferocity, by Nicola Lagioia, and The Catholic School, by Edoardo Albinati. Aside from the work of Gianfranco Carofiglio, Shugaar also translated books by many of the leading figures in the field, including Massimo Carlotto, Sandrone Dazieri, Maurizio de Giovanni, the late Giorgio Faletti, Antonio Manzini, and others. He's received two National Endowment of the Arts fellowships. Shugaar translated two books in the W. W. Norton Collected Works of Primo Levi, published in 2015. His translation of Hollow Heart by Viola Di Grado was shortlisted for both the PEN and the ALTA Italian translation awards. He has translated for many TV series and movies for HBO, Netflix, and Amazon.

Stella Saccà, born in Rome, Italy, and based in Brooklyn, NY is an actress, director, playwright, screenwriter and producer. She has been working in Theater since the age of 16 as an actress and started writing and producing when she was 23, after graduating in Languages at the University Roma Tre. Among all her productions, she was awarded for several plays including Come Restare Vedove Senza Intaccare La Fedina Penale (How To Become Widows Without Affecting the Criminal Record), E Luce FuIl mio Compleanno (My Birthday), I Leoni Non Si Abbracciano (Lions Don’t Hug). Saccà also co-wrote, acted and co-produced the short movie L’Appuntamento (The Date), awarded with the Golden Globe in 2013. Her first direction in New York City happened in January 2020 for the New York Theater Festival, where she directed the English version of her awarded play Lions Don’t Hug. She is currently also working as a jury member for the New York Movie Awards and the Florence Film Awards.

Valeria Orani For over thirty years, Valeria Orani has produced live theatre in both non-profit and commercial settings, a vocation which led in 2003 to the creation of 369gradi, the first Italian organization devoted to supporting, promoting, and managing young companies producing innovative theatre. Over time 369gradi has expanded its activities to embrace performance art and contemporary culture more broadly. Together with Frank Hentschker she created the highly succesful, award-winning and influential Italian and American Playwrights Project

Presented by The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in collaboration with Valeria Orani/369gradi, the Italian Cultural Institute, and the Media Partnership RADIO3.

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