Synopsis

While outside the sewer, filled with garbage and toxic trash, is flooding the city, causing people to panic and forcing them to remain in their homes, in an old body shop turned kitchen, specializing in takeout for people with allergies, there are eight characters: Plinio, former star chef now broke who grows unattainable dreams of culinary redemption while reality forces him to make pre-cooked meals imported from China; his wife Clara, former dishwasher and social climber who, in time, became an unlikely business-woman, always fighting with her husband over the best way to make business; Igor, Clara’s son and Plinio’s step-son, nineteen, who is affected by a form of emotional disability and has been. Locked up inside his room for months, obsessed with a war game, “Drown the Immigrant”, which has become the only vent valve for his frustration. Soon, Patty (Plinio’s 70-year-old mother and a declared feminist) will join them after having spent her life helping oppressed people in their fight for independence and went back to Italy to fight her last fight: because of the sewer emergency, the government must approve a decree to protect and sustain the least fortunate, but, when people on the far right learn that immigrants are included among them, they start killing them and shouting “Fatherland first”. To complete the tragicomic picture there is Cesare, an aspiring suicide attacker who becomes part of the team and will end up caring deeply for Igor; Mosquito, an ex-con aspiring actor who is forced to do community service thanks to an agreement. Between the jail’s director and Clara, who is exploiting him to gain access to European funds; Mohamed, a university professor from Lebanon turned underpaid, overworked rider in Italy; and Hope, a mysterious and bizarre dishwasher from Ethiopia who hides a big secret and morally controversial objectives.

directed by Robert Funaro

with (in alphabetic order)
William Demerit /Reporter
Elyse Delucci /Clara
Nick De Simone /Cesare
Robert Funaro /Plinio
Joey Gay /Mosquito
Olivia Jane /Woman
Debra Kahn Bay /Hope
Sachika Parker /Patty / Xia
Micah Spayer /Igor

produced by Valeria Orani
sound engeneer and editing Marc Urselli
recorded at East Side Sound - NYC MMXXII - The Italian Playwrights Project 3rd edition© 

ABOUT THE Author:

Gabriele Di Luca Born in Pesaro in 1981, Gabriele Di Luca is a playwright, screenwriter, actor, and director. Having graduated from the Accademia d’Arte Drammatica Nico Pepe in Udine in 2007, he founded the theater company Carrozzeria Orfeo, together with Massimiliano Setti and Luisa Supino, in 2008. 

In June 2013 he won the SIAE Creativity Award 2013 for best national playwright. In the same year, he wrote Thanks for Vaselina, a very successful work thanks to which he and his theatrical company Carrozzeria Orfeo won the Premio Hystrio-Castel dei Mondi in June 2015. In the same year, he wrote Animali da Bar (winner of the Premio Hystrio Twister 2016) and, in the following year, Cous Cous Klan (Premio Le Maschere per il Teatro 2019 for best Italian novelty) whose stage copyrights were acquired for a television project.

The film Thanks! is an adaptation of Thanks for Vaselina.  Released in Italian movie theaters in October 2019 and subsequently on Netflix, it was a finalist for Best Film Feature at the ReelHeART International Film Festival 2020 in Canada. In 2019 the stage rights to the same work were sold in Spain where the show was staged by Catalan director Sergi Belbel.

In July 2020 Miracoli Metropolitani, which he authored and co-directed, made its debut at the Naples Teatro Festival Italia.