Dr. Emelise Aleandri  makes a strong case for especially "remembering " Lou La Russo, whose obituary  from the NY Times was recently reported here.

For as a prolific playright, La Russo, who was mostly autobiographical, with a strong attachment to his  Italian-American heritage, wove one of the most extensive and rich of Italian-American theatrical sagas.
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Remembering  Louie
 

       After reading the New York Times obit on Lou La Russo, and not seeing many others that really dealt with his work as an Italian-American writer, I thought it appropriate, since I created original roles in some of his last productions and became familiar with his large body of work, to put his writing in a better context for this forum, something which the Times failed to do. The Times carried his obit, I suspect, because his plays were produced on Broadway and Off-Broadway (the usual prerequisite for even being noticed in print by the Times) and this made Lou newsworthy according to their standards.

In rattling off a list of such credits, they omitted what I consider the most important points about these works. What is significant about his play writing is the fact that it is mostly autobiographical and consequently Italian-American. He was in the truest sense an Italian-American playwright describing Italian-American themes and contributing to that steadily increasing body of work known as Italian-American theatre.

In the seventies, Lou was one of the original members of the Forum of Italian-American Playwrights, along with Mario Fratti (Nine), Jo Ann Tedesco (Sacraments) and Donna De Matteo (the Italian-American Neil Simon), to name only a few. They met at a little Off-Off Broadway theatre, the Courtyard Playhouse in the village and read their work for their colleagues to hear and critique. There the germs of Lou's future Broadway hits began and became early Broadway vehicles for Danny Aiello and Paul Sorvino.

Lou's work recreated the drama of his own family and neighborhood acquaintances, largely from Hoboken's Italian-American community. Characters appear and reappear in play after play, at different points in their lives. By charting the appearance of characters from his plays, the web of a community emerges, resulting in the creation of a composite character, the town and community of Hoboken itself.

He was the playwright of Hoboken, New Jersey and I remember in the three productions I did with him in Manhattan, the Mayor of Hoboken himself crossed the river and attended. So it is not just the few plays that made the Times because they played Broadway and Off-Broadway that count; it is the entirety of his work about the Italian-American experience in a small town not far from, and not unaffected by it's proximity to, New York City.

His recent passing from cancer vividly reminds me of the first play I did with him, Sweatshop. Soon after his return to New Jersey from L.A. and his diagnosis, and faced perhaps for the first time with his own mortality, he was driven to write a play (which he incorrectly thought might even be his last) as a final tribute to his mother. Thus the drama Sweatshop was born, featuring three characters from his own real life family and many others based on actual people he knew in Hoboken, and who are reincarnated from his other plays. The drama concentrated on the lives of 10 sewing machine operators (including his mother, aunt and sister) and two owners working in a garment factory in a loft in Hoboken in the 50's.

Working with Lou as playwright and director was truly an Italian-American family experience. Just as in Italian family get togethers, favorite anecdotes are shared and handed down thru the generations, the cast would all huddle together with Lou as we heard all the true family stories and neighborhood gossip about the real-life characters' lives so that we could incorporate both their psychological and physical eccentricities and characteristics into our portrayals and character development. When the original workshop production of Sweatshop went into an Off-Broadway contract the following year, Lou was insistent about recalling the large 12 character cast back again so the "family," as he called it, could still get back together and recreate the ensemble performance that worked so well originally.

His dramaturgy, I would venture to say, is sometimes structurally flawed. Also, Lou's writing has a penchant for long poetical monologues so difficult to sustain in a theatrical setting but that, in all fairness to him, he was not afraid to cut when the play ran too long. (Our first readthru of the first act of Sweatshop was itself over two hours but he came back in after a weekend of cutting with a newly trimmed down version and the cuts continued as necessary as rehearsals progressed.) But these points are minor when one considers his incredible creativity and prolific dramatic catalog. Collectively his plays are truly an Italian-American saga.
 

Dr. Emelise Aleandri, Artistic Director
Frizzi & Lazzi The Olde Time Italian-American Music & Theatre Company
Website: http://www.FrizziLazzi.com
140 Riverside Drive NY 10024-2605
212 769 8920; fax 212 769 2078
cell 917 621 1036
email:ealeandri@aol.com
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Excerpts from New York Times Obituary , 2/28/03

....Mr. LaRusso, a native of Hoboken, wrote scores of plays. About two dozen of them chronicled working-class life in his hometown, starting with "Beginnings,"...
... "Lamppost Reunion," which won Tony and Drama Desk nominations for best play in 1976....Other plays produced on Broadway were "Wheelbarrow Closers" (1976) and "Knockout" (1979). His Off Broadway work included "Marlon Brando Sat Right Here" (1980) and "Sweatshop" (1998).

"Sweatshop," at the American Theater of Actors, was the tale of 10 struggling women in a coat factory during a heat wave 40 years earlier. The reviewer for The Times, Lawrence Van Gelder, called it a "big, sentimental drama" in which Mr. LaRusso's skills could "sustain interest and arouse emotion.

"Mr. LaRusso worked on the books of several Broadway musicals and in the movies. He helped rewrite "Saturday Night Fever" in 1977, and, living in Los Angeles for a time, received screen credits for "Beyond the Reef" (1983), "Hell Hunters" (1986) and "The Closer" (1990), based on his own play.

Mr. LaRusso studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He lived in the row house, built around 1860, in which his mother had been born. He had his first poem published in a local newspaper at 5 after giving it to his kindergarten teacher as a Christmas offering. (A collection of his poems, "More Than Just Works," was published in 1962.)...