ABOUT US:
ARTISTIC DIRECTORS
Valeria Orani: by the time she moved to New York in 2015, Valeria Orani had served as administrative director, coordinator, and producer in public and private Italian theatre institutions, and had provided support to a large number of artistic projects. She had established herself as a well-known promoter and producer of Italian creative talent through 369gradi, which she founded in 2003 as a center for innovative services to promote and distribute Italian culture, particularly contemporary art and the performing arts. In 2014, Valeria Orani established a transoceanic pilot project which aimed to promote the work of professionals in the contemporary world of Italian arts and crafts in New York City. She founded Umanism LLC in 2015. “Umanism” is the crasis or combination of the Italian word “umanesimo” and the English word “humanism.” Umanism functions as an open platform to support European arts in New York City and American arts in Italy. www.umanism.com and www.369gradi.it
Frank Hentschker, who holds a Ph.D. in theatre from the now legendary Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany, came to the Graduate Center in 2001 as program director for the Graduate Center’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and was appointed to the central doctoral faculty in theatre in 2009.
Currently executive director and director of programs at the Segal Center, Hentschker has transformed the center into the nation’s leading forum for public programming in international and U.S. theatre and theatre studies; each year, he curates and produces more than forty events—staged readings, lecture-demonstrations, symposia, works-in-progress, and conversations with theatre scholars, theatrical luminaries, and emerging voices in the international, American, and New York theatre scenes. Among the vital events and series he founded at the Segal Center are the World Theatre Performance series; the annual fall PRELUDE festival, which features more than twenty New York–based theatre companies and playwrights; and the PEN World Voices Playwrights Series. Hentschker also led CUNY’s nineteen performing arts centers in founding the CUNY–Performing Arts Consortium (C–PAC), producing the consortium’s first joint festival in 2009.
PROJECT BOARD
Patricia Gaborik (Author/Translator) is a Wisconsin native transplanted to Italy, where she teaches both at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts “Silvio d’Amico” and the University of Calabria.
Holding degrees from Northwestern University (BS), The University of California - Santa Barbara (MA), The University of Wisconsin (PhD) and the Sapienza University of Rome (Dottorato di ricerca), her scholarly specialization is late-nineteenth and early- twentieth century Italian theatre and cultural history. She has authored, in addition to several articles and book chapters, Mussolini’s Theatre. Fascist Experiments in Art and Politics, published by Cambridge University Press, and is currently editing, also for Cambridge, Pirandello in Context.
Patricia’s translation of Massimo Bontempelli’s Watching the Moon, which she published with Italica Press in 2013, had its Off-Off Broadway premiere in November 2018. For the same press, she is also editing an anthology of modern Italian drama in English translation.
Patricia is also an award-winning playwright; she has collaborated with Chicago Dramatists, the University of Wisconsin Marcia Legere Binns Playwright Festival, the Village Playhouse Wisconsin Playwrights, and the English Theater of Rome, which has staged Finishing the Kitchen (2010) and Down the Aisle (2014). Her pieces have been published both in the US and Italy.
For the Italian and American Playwrights Project, she has translated Giuliana Musso’s Mio eroe (My Hero).
Marco Calvani (Author/Director): Marco is an Italian-born award-winning playwright and director, a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America and the Playwrights/Directors Unit at The Actors Studio.
Trained as an actor, since he was a teenager, Marco made his debut as a playwright in 2002 with Quasi, commissioned by the European Social Forum. Strong Hands was his first play to be performed to great acclaim throughout Europe. Commissions from Todi Art Festival, Phoenix Theatre of London, Teatro di Roma, Théâtre de la Ville of Paris, La MaMa Theatre of New York and Grec Fundaciò of Barcelone followed.
In 2012 Marco created with his fellow Neil LaBute the international project AdA – Author directing Author (Spoleto Festival, Fringe Festival Madrid, La MaMa Theatre, Biennale Venice, Grec Festival Barcelone). In 2013 the Teatro Metastasio Stabile della Toscana organized a retrospective of his work for which he wrote and directed I am Dracula.
Marco has collaborated in the position of Literary Advisor to the National Theatre of Scotland and is the founder and artistic director of Mixò (www.mixonline.eu) an international cultural center based in Rome, Italy, that brings together young actors and writers and promotes original works for the stage.
He is the winner of the 2011 S.I.A.E. Prize for Best Playwright, of the 2013 Outstanding Playwright for his play Oil (Planet Connections Theatre Festivity Awards) and of the 2015 Calcante Prize for The Second Time. He’s also the recipient of the 2011 Cité Internationale des Arts Grant (Paris) and of the 2015 Writer Fellowship at the Edward F. Albee Foundation. He’s a permanent artist-in-residence at La MaMa Theatre. He teaches writing and acting in USA and in Europe. He translates from English and French into Italian and he’s an official translator of Theresa Rebeck, Bernard-Marie Koltès and Bryony Lavery. His work is translated and produced in nine different languages across the world.
His short film The View from Up Here (US/France 2017) - based on his eponymous play commissioned by The Actors Studio and directed by Estelle Parsons - stars Academy Award winner Melissa Leo and César winner Leïla Bekhti. He is currently working in Paris on his first feature film
MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION
Tiziana Marcuccio comes from a marketing, PR, and business background.
She was the Head of Investment for the Department of International Trade of the UK Government for 14 years. In this role, she organized many successful business and cultural events. She curated 10 editions of the UK-Italy Business Awards, an annual award ceremony in collaboration with the Italian Stock Exchange. She also created one of the first business acceleration bootcamps in Italy for internationally-minded startups. She supported companies in different sectors but focused on digital and creative industries for the most where she worked to facilitate collaborations between Italian movie production companies and UK partners. She participated in many editions of the Venice International Film Festival where she organized events, awarding ceremonies and press conferences for the annual UK-Italy Creative Industries Award, a special prize awarded to new Italian productions with international potentials. Tiziana moved to New York City in 2019 and since then she has been collaborating with Umanism to develop and promote new projects between Italy and the US, design and implement a communication strategy and foster new partnerships.
PROJECT ASSISTANT
Valeria Di Giuliano is a cultural operator, a literary scout and a translator. She has been involved in theater for ten years with particular attention to the English-speaking and Portuguese-speaking dramaturgy.
Valeria worked as a model between Rome and Milan and studied acting. She graduated at La Sapienza University in Languages and Translation, translating from Brazilian to Italian the musical comedy "Ópera do malandro" by Chico Buarque in collaboration with the author. She studied new media communication and event promotion and she has been writing articles about theater and culture on La Voce di New York.
She is currently involved in communication and promotion of events, in particular in the theatrical field, contributing to the diffusion of foreign contemporary dramaturgy in Italy and vice versa and facilitating the liaison among institutions and cultural organizations in the world for the realization of international artistic projects.
She was a member of the jury for the Mario Fratti Award for In Scena! in 2018.
FOUNDERS
PARTNERS
MEDIA PARTNER
About Umanism NYC: Umanism is a company dedicated to the promotion and support of contemporary Italian culture and its professionals in New York. A movement, an open platform connecting Italy to the USA recognizing and expanding the creative potential of projects by Italian artists, supporting them in each step of the production and communication in the larger and more challenging context of New York www.umanism.com
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center: The Segal Center bridges the gap between the academic and performing arts communities through dynamic public programs and digital initiatives that are free and open to all. Home to theatre artists, scholars, students, performing arts managers, and the local and international performance communities, the Segal Center provides a supportive environment for conversation, open exchange, and the development of new ideas and new work. Year round, the Center presents a wide variety of FREE public programs which feature leading national and international artists, scholars, and arts professionals in conversation about theatre and performance. Programs include staged readings to further the development of new and classic plays, festivals celebrating New York performance (PRELUDE) and international plays (PEN World Voices), screenings of performance works on film, artists in conversation, academic lecture series, televised seminars, symposia, and arts in education programs. In addition, the Center maintains its long-standing visiting-scholars-from-abroad program, publishes a series of highly regarded academic journals, as well as single volumes of importance (including plays in translation), all written and edited by renowned scholars. www.theSegalCenter.org
About 369gradi Contemporary Culture Production: In 2003, Valeria Orani founded "369gradi", a production and curatorial company as well as a Center for the promotion and distribution of Italian culture, based in Rome, Italy. "369gradi" mission is to investigate new possibilities in contemporary art, performing arts and drama. In 2013 alone 369gradi produced over 12 award-winning ensembles pieces, presented at major Italian theatres and festivals. www.369gradi.it
Italian Cultural Institute NY: Founded in 1961, the Italian Cultural Institute of New York is an office of the Italian government, dedicated to the promotion of Italian language and culture in the United States through the organization of cultural events.
Under the guidance of its trustees at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, its advisory board, and its staff, the Italian Institute of Culture of New York conforms to this commitment by fostering the cultural exchange between Italy and the US in a variety of areas, from the arts to the humanities to science.
American University of Rome: Since 1969, the American University of Rome has provided an American liberal arts education to students from all over the world seeking a unique and extraordinary educational experience. It is the oldest American degree-granting institution in Rome, Italy and currently offers 10 Bachelor (B.A.) Degrees and 3 Master (M.A.) degrees. All programs are taught in English.
