"Seven Rabbits on a Pole" is by playwright John Picardi - who also wrote the very successful "The Sweepers", and is the second play in Picardi's Italian American ten cycle play series, designed to represent the Italian American experience during the 20th Century.
NIAF has provided funding for the Series.
Be
sure to read not only the Press release on "Seven Rabbits on a Pole", but
the
Article that follows on regarding "Sweepers" and playwright John Picardi.
===========================================
Urban
Stages Presents
Seven
Rabbits on a Pole
Love,
lust, opera, and art... enjoy Picardi's latest play.
As
part of his Italian American series, this heartwarming humorous and touching
story of the Great Depression and a courageous Italian immigrant family
finding their way through rapidly changing times.
Urban Stages will continue celebrating their 20th Anniversary Season with the World Premiere of SEVEN RABBITS ON A POLE, a new play by John C. Picardi.
Love, lust, opera and art occupy the lives of an Italian immigrant family living on a vegetable farm south of Boston in SEVEN RABBITS ON A POLE. Emotion and comedy soar when a meddling neighbor and a stranger selling rabbits arrive, revealing secrets which alter lives.
Set in the mid 1930's during the depression, SEVEN RABBITS ON A POLE is part of Mr. Picardi’s series of plays chronicling the Italian-American experience.
John C. Picardi and Frances Hill also collaborated on THE SWEEPERS (“Mr. Picardi's writing renders his characters timeless”-Van Gelder, NY TIMES), which had its world premiere at Urban Stages last season and enjoyed a very long extended run. The same production moved to Capital Rep Theatre in Albany where it broke box office records this past fall.
A new
play by John C. Picardi, Directed by Frances Hill
Performances
Begin Tuesday, March 30th, Opening Night set for Tuesday, April 6th
At
259 West 30th Street (between 7th and 8th)
=================================================
[
RAA Note: The title ``Sweepers'' - refers to the way each of the women
have to clean up others' messes.]
THE SWEEPERS' BRUSHES ASIDE ITALIAN AMERICAN-STEREOTYING
Boston
Herald
By
Terry Byrne
Friday,
March 26, 2004
Inside the close confines of a shared North End back yard, three women share problems, joys and fears in the closing days of World War II. Although their stories might seem insignificant, their world, as portrayed in ``The Sweepers,'' has struck a chord with audiences around the country.
The play, which makes its New England debut at the Stoneham Theatre on Thursday, already has garnered that theater its biggest advance ticket sales of the season.
``Boston, with all its neighborhoods and rivalries, has a sense of safety and community,'' says ``Sweepers'' playwright John C. Picardi, who was raised in Quincy and lived in the North End for a few years before heading to grad school and then New York. ``And although I'm writing very specifically about Italian-Catholic women in Boston at a particular time, I think audiences recognize them, and recognize themselves in them, too.''
Picardi says his play tries to create fully realized characters from a working-class Italian community who don't fall into familiar stereotypes.
``Seventy percent of Americans think all Italians are connected to the Mafia,'' says Picardi. ``In movies and on TV, when Italians are not gangsters, they're working-class buffoons. I'm trying to show my own Italian-American experience that's different. I hate it when the working class is shown as stupid. In `The Sweepers,' the women aren't stupid; they're naive about the world but they all have emotional intelligence. They're all noble.''
Picardi's positive images in ``The Sweepers'' attracted the attention of the National Italian American Foundation, which gave him a grant to continue work on ``The Sweepers.'' The group also is funding his newest play, ``Seven Rabbits on a Pole,'' about an immigrant family on a farm south of Boston in the 1930s. ``Seven Rabbits'' has its world premiere Off-Broadway at Urban Stages on Tuesday.
Why make women the focus of ``The Sweepers''?``. . . I like writing about women,'' Picardi says. ``I think they're more interesting onstage. I also come from a family of strong career women. My grandmother raised five kids and worked for the WPA and my sister (Kathleen Bandera) sued the Quincy police for sexual harassment and won.''
The three women in ``The Sweepers'' confront the trauma of men still away at war and men who've returned wounded, and fear of changes to come and of the next generation abandoning cultural traditions. In one scene, a woman asks her new daughter-in-law to hang out the wedding sheet the day after the wedding to prove she was a virgin.
But does setting the play in the past make Picardi's style old-fashioned?
``I'm proud to be called old-fashioned,'' he says. ``That's my sensibility. My heroes are William Inge, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller. But I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I've always liked to be around older people. And when you talk to older people who've lived, you learn more.''
Picardi's grounded characters also benefit from his own wide-ranging experiences. After graduating from Johnson & Wales culinary arts school, Picardi worked as a chef at a restaurant on Boston Common and as a flight attendant for Eastern Airlines.
``I got to travel a lot for little money,'' Picardi says, ``but one day we were stuck in Atlanta and I started writing while we were waiting around and that was it.''
Picardi went back to school at UMass-Boston and then to grad school at Carnegie Mellon. Eventually, he moved to New York.
``The Sweepers'' and ``Seven Rabbits'' are the first in a series of 10 plays Picardi hopes to write that chronicle the Italian-American experience in each decade of the 20th century.
Although he's also written a novel, Picardi says the joy of theater is the response he gets.
``My goal is for people to come into the theater and feel compassion,'' he says.
BostonHerald.com
- the Edge: `The Sweepers' brushes aside Italian-American stereotyping
http://theedge.bostonherald.com/
artsNews/view.bg?articleid=876