Synopsis

He is alone in the apartment. He hears some footsteps coming from the landing. Trying not to make a sound, he looks through the spyhole. He tells Greta when she comes home that he saw the neighbors. How were they? He cannot tell, seeing is not understanding, but he is scared. Why? Who knows? What about Greta? No, Greta is not afraid of the neighbors. She can’t wait to meet them. But she’s afraid of the Old Lady. Which old lady? The Old Lady she sees at night, the one who used to live in the building. This is a play about our fears, real and imagined, about ourselves and the other, about neighbors near and far, about war.

ABOUT THE Author:

Fausto Paravidino was born in Genova, he grew up in a small village in northern Italy and he now basically lives in Rome. He’s and actor a director and a playwright. His plays includes Trinciapollo, Gabriele, 2 Fratelli, La Malattia della Famiglia M, Natura Morta in un Fosso, Peanuts (for Connections, National Theatre), Genoa 01 (for Royal Court Theatre), Morbid, Exit, Il Caso B, Il Diario di Mariapia, i Vicini (for Thèatre National du Bretange), Il Macello di Giobbe (for Teatro Valle Occupato), They Were in My Field (for Royal Court Theatre). He also wrote several plays for the Italian public radio. The movie he wrote and directed, Texas, was presented at Venice film festival in 2005.   

About the Translator:

Jane House, PhD, translator, actress, writer, and editor, had a peripatetic childhood, which took her to Panama, Bulgaria, Angola, Switzerland, England, and the U.S. 

She attended high school in Denver, and earned a BA at Stanford University. After moving to New York City she performed off-off Broadway, on Broadway (Lenny), in national tours (Bedroom Farce and An Inspector Calls) and regional theatre, in film, and on television. After earning a PhD at the City University of New York (CUNY), she taught courses in theatre and oral communication at CUNY, NYU, and Vassar College. She served as associate director then director of publications in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Office of Public Affairs and Publications from 2001 to 2013. 

Jane House has been a driving force in bringing twentieth-century Italian drama to the attention of the English-speaking public. Her translations from Italian have appeared in Twentieth-Century Italian Drama: An Anthology, 1900–50 (Columbia University Press, 1995), which she edited with Antonio Attisani; and the six-volume Mellen Collection of Twentieth-Century Italian Drama 1950–2001 (Edwin Mellen Press, 2015), consisting of fourteen plays, which she coedited, translated, and annotated with Jack Street. Her translations of Lucia Calamaro’s L’origine del mondo (The Origin of the World) and Fausto Paravidino’s I vicini (The Neighbors) appear in this collection of contemporary Italian plays published by the Martin E. Segal Theater Center. Dr. House’s translations have been presented as staged readings by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY; at the Italian Cultural Institutes of New York City and London; and at Oxford University.