In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY 2025

The New York City-based Kairos Italy Theater along with the Italy-based KIT Italia and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU present the 12th season of the In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater taking place in all five boroughs of NYC. Each year In Scena! showcases some of the best Italian theater from Italy in New York City. The festival features productions that have already toured in Italy as well as readings of Italian plays in translation, lectures and exchanges between Italian and international artists. The goal is to promote greater awareness of Italian theater and Italian artists among New York City theatergoers and to build a bridge between the artistic scenes in Italy and the US.

Highlights of the 2025 festival include:
Mater Familias
by Pier Lorenzo Pisano (2015 Mario Fratti Award-winner)
Translated by Carlotta Brentan
Directed by Emma Denson
Mater Familias is the story of three generations through increasingly difficult times, as they sometimes help each other, and sometimes clash in order to survive. A powerful drama with exact dialogue and sharply drawn relationships, it begins with a mother and son’s desperate need to commit a crime. 

Lampedusa Beach
Written & Directed by Lina Prosa
Performed by Nadia Kibout & Daniele Onorati
Shauba, a young African woman, recounts her difficult experience: the dreams and hopes that led her to face a long and dangerous journey that were shattered off the coast of Lampedusa. Nadia Kibout presents a solo show on migration accompanied by the soundscapes of Maestro Daniele Onorati and his oodoo, very special ceramic musical instruments.

Alfredino, Italy in a Deep Well
(Alfredino. L'Italia in Fondo a un Pozzo)
Written & Performed by Fabio Banfo
Directed by Serena Piazza
On the evening of June 10, 1981 six year old Alfredo (Alfredino) Rampi fell 36 meters deep into a well in Vermicino, a village near Rome. In the next 35 hours, Italy was glued to the TV watching the first non-stop live broadcast to cover the attempt to save him. It was a turning point in the history of Italian TV, which is still studied in journalism schools and where the modern sensationalist way of dealing with news was born.

In the Name of Mary
(Nel Nome di Maria)
Written & Directed by Chiara Gambino
Original Music by Domenico Gargano
Performed by Chiara Gambino & Alba Sofia Vella
The show is inspired by and rewrites a mafia story that occurred in Palermo on November 14 1982 and which led to the death of the young Sicilian policeman Calogero Zucchetto, who in that period was working with the Palermo Mobile Squad in the search for mafia affiliates. The point of view of the show is the one of his girlfriend Maria Lo Bello, tormented in the years following the loss by the question: “Could it have gone differently?". For the entire duration of the show, the protagonist responds unaware to this question, with a true and ironic, fragile and disenchanted stream of consciousness, recounting the meeting and pursuing the love that led her to get engaged to Calogero (Lillo for his friends) Zucchetto.

The Popess: Instructions for Freedom
Written & Performed by Elena Mazzon
Directed by Colin Watkeys
Italy 13th Century—the Guglielmites heretical sect causes havoc in Milan. Their leader, Guglielma of Bohemia, believed to be the second coming of the Holy Spirit, appoints Sister Maifreda, as her Popess. and together heralds a new female-led era, where only women could save humanity from eternal suffering. It did not take long for the inquisition to find out about the congregation and its beliefs. The Popess is a dark comedy solo show, which unravels the mystery of a true early feminist movement in the Italian misogynistic religious history, investigating the discrepancies between religion, faith and power and, ultimately, the meaning of freedom.

Six Characters in Search of an Author
By Luigi Pirandello
Adapted & Directed by Nick Gabriel
This original adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author was conceived by author and director Nick Gabriel at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and further developed in response to the #metoo movement. Gabriel has recreated a version of this metatheatrical, Existentialist classic that is faithful to Pirandello’s original vision, while contemporizing the circumstances to reflect the current cultural zeitgeist. 

Like an Octopus in a Guitar
(Come un Polpo Nella Chitarra)
Written by Marco Ziello
Directed by Licia Amarante & Marco Ziello
When the protagonist of Like an Octopus in a Guitar decides he no longer wants to leave the house, he develops an obsession with Death and begins to spend his days imagining his funeral. A funny and absurd journey inside the mind of an individual who is slowly losing his memories, where the actors' bodies become a metaphor and instrument for remembering. In this suspended world, in which even the names of the characters have been forgotten, dream and reality merge to tell the story of a man's internal battle. A battle between the desire to heal and the temptation to remain, forever, playing with Death.