Several friends of Long Wharf Theatre’s have sent in stories about growing up Italian American to go along with the lovely old photos. Shane Quinn, born in New Haven, shared a story about his grandfather Peter Dino.

I am a proud 3rd generation Italian-American. I am 25 years old, born in New Haven, CT, and love family and food, especially Pepe’s Pizza. My maternal grandfather, Peter Dino, was born on October 27, 1914 in New Haven, CT, although his mother and father soon thereafter returned with him to their home in Palermo, Sicily, where my grandfather spent the first 20 years of his life.

He worked with his hands, doing chorus throughout their humble home in between going to school. This would serve him well in later years when he would have to build a life for himself and his family in the United States from practically nothing. I remember a story he used to tell my brother and me all the time. For Christmas each year he would get a nickel, a tangerine, and a walnut. And that was a good year! Presents or not, he was grateful for what he had.

There are many more stories than just this one. As soon as my grandfather was old enough, he enlisted in the Italian Army, where he began to solidify his values of hard work and sacrifice. When his parents decided to move back to the United States in search of a better life, he took a variety of odd-jobs in order to learn the language, from delivering bread to working as an electrician. He eventually joined the United States Army and served as a private first class in World War II, primarily in the south pacific and Solomon Islands. When the war was over in 1945, he returned home with a bronze star and soon thereafter married my grandmother, Lucy Barbetto, on June 30, 1946 at St. Anthony’s Church in New Haven, CT.

Peter Dino and Lucy Barbetto on their wedding day in 1946

My grandparents both worked for Yale University for many years, first serving as the respective maid and chauffeur for then-president Alfred Whitney Griswold. My grandfather then became head electrician for Yale until the 1980s, when he retired. My grandmother moved on to the dining halls where she worked until the 1990s. In their retirement, my grandparents (Nanny and Poppy as my brother and I called them), were totally devoted to their family. Whether picking us up from school, fixing a leaky faucet at our house, or bringing us doughnuts every Sunday, they were always there for us. To me, this is the foundation of what it means to be Italian.

My grandfather liked to have a small glass of red wine every night with dinner.

He would always say to my grandmother, “It’s good for my heart!” He liked his pasta al dente, never mushy, and was obsessed with nuts and figs. He even tried to grow a fig tree in his backyard. Living in the ever-changeable climate of Connecticut, however, this proved a difficult task. Still, he took care of that tree like it was his child. A few seasons went by without any fruit on it, after which my grandmother would always tell him to dig it up and throw it away. But, true to his nature, my grandfather was patient and nurturing to the fragile tree, which eventually yielded one fig. I’m sure it was the sweetest fig he ever tasted. This is exactly how he treated his family, with kindness patience, generosity, and self-sacrifice. And he did it all in a silent, but strong manner.

My grandfather also had a deep love for Italian music, especially opera. He would play his favorite records and CDs on his homemade stereo system, everything from Enrico Carusso, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti, to Andre Bocelli and even local Italian singers like Nina Pane and Aaron Caruso. He played classical guitar and mandolin, and told stories of how he used to walk down the streets of Sicily serenading girls out on their balconies. He fondly recalled a particular night when one of the girls threw a flower pot down at him. I’m not sure if it was because she didn’t like his singing voice or because of something else, but my grandmother would jokingly tell my brother and me, whatever the reason, he deserved it! Kidding aside, it was his love of music that he passed down to my brother and me, both now professional musicians. After both graduating from Providence College with degrees in Music and Theatre, my brother went on to Manhattan School of Music and myself to New York University.

I still think of him before every performance and each time I’m on stage. I know he’s with me.

My grandfather also loved to travel the world and take photos and slides, which he would later display using his home-projector and screen which he kept in the basement. While my grandparents frequently went back to Italy to visit with family and friends in the “old country,” as they called it, they also traveled to Spain, Mexico, France, Canada, and England. My grandfather thought traveling was part of the “American Dream,” and soaked up culture from other parts of the world like a sponge. He was tolerant and open to people, no matter who they were or where they came from. He was also a religious man, although you would never know it. He was more concerned with honesty and integrity, both within himself and others. He felt if you had those virtues, God would smile upon you.

My grandmother is 98 years old and living in Hamden, CT in same house she has lived in for over 50 years. Over the past few years she has developed dementia and is in need of some in-home care, however she is still very much herself, from hosting guests to letting everyone know what’s on her mind. We affectionately joke she could have her own reality TV show: “Life with Lucy!” My grandfather passed away, somewhat fittingly, on September 11, 2006. Five years after thousands of heroic Americans gave their lives for their country, it was time for him to give his. I miss him everyday, but his memory, and most importantly, what he taught me not just about what it means to be Italian, but rather about how to live a decent life, lives on in me.

The Dino family in 1968

Writing a play of any length in a month is an extremely daunting task. Yet, 20 Hillhouse High School sophomores achieved that goal on Tuesday.

Long Wharf Theatre’s education department embarked on its first ever residency at Hillhouse High School in New Haven, taking place from March 1 through April 5. The final performance on April 12 occurred for an audience of approximately 100 family, friends and teachers.

“They are a receptive and creative group of kids who were willing to go to deep places inside themselves, committing to their own voices and their own points of view,” said Annie DiMartino, Long Wharf Theatre’s director of education.

Through group work, Kevin Barbero’s creative writing class created four 10-minute plays, inspired by the questions: Can a single, recurring symbol capture the entire history and peoples of a culture?  What symbol best captures the story of New Haven?

The four plays written were:

The Moment it Happened (a play that discussed the consequences of remaining silent after being raped),

The Road Beyond Here (a play that explored gang violence and the decision one must make to either seek retribution or offer forgiveness)

Barbie Doll (a play that investigated body image and the particular challenges women have today)

Power Conquers Failure (a play that discussed the questions of athletics vs. academics)

The class performed in the Hillhouse High School auditorium and the students not performing on stage doubled as ushers, light board operators and backstage crew.  They performed in front of other Hillhouse classes as well as family and friends.  There were approximately 100 in attendance.

Director of Education Annie DiMartino worked with Barbero’s creative writing class to create the original 10-minute plays. His class has been examining some classics of the American theatre, including A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. “We are now focusing on the progression of blacks as a cultural group, focusing on how symbols tell the story of this culture,” Barbero said. “We’ve been studying how recurring symbols or motifs drive the plays forward. We’ve focused on how black playwrights use blood, water, and the kitchen as important symbols, amongst others.”

DiMartino gave Hillhouse students a comprehensive workshop on how to create a piece of theatre while exploring some of the biggest issues facing American society today – racism, women’s rights, and the reclamation of a people from historic wrongs. “We hope that as a group the students were able to decide what culture means to them and able to develop a cultural statement while creating their new plays,” DiMartino said.

Each scene, centered on a unique cultural symbol, was created by a group of five students, who also performed the play. A script editor was in charge of collecting the students’ written material and editing it into a cohesive work. A graphic designer created each play’s production art. The sound designer also selected four minutes worth of music for both before and after the show that speaks to the themes of the work. Finally, a costume designer created actor clothing that spoke to characters’ personalities and socioeconomic stature.

Each student contributed monologues and dialogues to their respective pieces and the group will work together to create a theatrical whole. “They’ve been analyzing plays in sequence. This gave them a different way of dissecting a theatrical work,” DiMartino said.

The students will then select their favorite scripts and submit them to the Hillhouse Drama Club for possible full production.

Sid Mukerjee vowed that he would write his book on the history of cancer – The Emperor of Maladies – from the perspective of the patient, despite his own background as a doctor.

“If I could tell their stories, I could paint a very large canvas with very small brush strokes,” Mukerjee said. “That is how I was able to navigate writing the book.”

Mukerjee, a bestselling author, spoke Friday at Long Wharf Theatre’s Global Health and the Arts, an event dedicated to the finding the intersection between science and art. Doctors, researchers and members of the pharmaceutical industry got together for a daylong panel on the Mainstage to discuss innovations in cancer treatment and research. The group would then proceed to Stage II to see a performance of Agnes Under the Big Top, a play in which the lead character, Agnes, faces her life after receiving a prognosis of terminal cancer.

Mukerjee discussed a couple of key instances that inspired him to move forward with his book. “People told me that no one would read a book about cancer that is over 600 pages long and in parts not particularly cheerful,” he joked.

But a meeting with his editor helped encourage him that there was a story to be told. “One writer can communicate with one reader, sitting alone in a room … Medicine is about communication, a conversation between one doctor, communicating with one patient sitting in the same room,” Mukerjee said.

Doctor as storyteller and communicator is not a new phenomenon. Mukerjee said that medicine begins with a simple statement from a doctor to a patient – “Tell me your story.” “If I could just tell the stories of the patients, I could navigate my way through a very large, very complex history,” Mukerjee said.

Doctors face a real conundrum when treating the ravages of cancer – why bother, if the person is only going to get sicker? Why go through the motions when the solution is not readily apparent? Every patient is different and every age has its advancements that allow doctors to continue their work with greater and greater results. As Mukerjee said, you can’t get a cure without getting to care.

“The peculiar thing about our specialty is that uncertainty gives us hope. Living in uncertainty is medicine’s defense against nihilism,” he said.

To read more about Mukerjee’s work, check out this profile in the New York Times. http://nyti.ms/fAaZ4L

More beautiful family photos have been sent in to be displayed on the set of Italian American Reconciliation, which opens April 27. These family wedding photos were sent in by Robin Carlson.

Rehearsals started this week for the show and the cast is excitedly delving into the material. “The world of this play is kind of a mythic, fairytale world,” said Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein. “It is also much like when you begin to penetrate the Italian American community in New Haven. This play could take place on Wooster Street in New Haven. It is very rare that you get to do a play that so reflective of a particular community.”

We’ve received our first set of family photos for the set of our upcoming production of Italian American Reconciliation, beautiful shots of family life sent by Branford resident Alpha Coiro.

The shots are simply stunning. A glamorous group of men and women at a nightclub. A sober, serious minded little boy with perfected parted hair, in a long white child’s shirt, photographed by Pietrosimone of Grand Avenue in New Haven. A pair of brothers, perhaps, dressed in their Sunday best with perfectly shined shoes, staring pensively at the camera. Two children playing, one of which is wearing a really amazing aviator cap with goggles. A group of pretty, young women relaxing on a beach. A woman being taught how to make pasta by a dignified elderly lady. A family chattering happily during a picnic.

Photos of lives fully lived.

Please keep the photos coming!

Read the Transcript below or click here to watch video:
Aditi Brennan Kapil on PBS NewsHour

This segment was originally produced for tpt’s “MN Originals” series. You can watch the full version here.

JEFFREY BROWN: For those stations not taking a pledge break, we hear a unique voice from Minnesota. Here in her own words is Minneapolis playwright and actor, Aditi Brennan Kapil.

ADITI BRENNAN KAPIL, playwright and actress: There’s an international element to my writing always. The last play I wrote was bilingual in English and American sign language because I find language to be such a compelling lens into the human condition. And this play is also multilingual. They are also very layered and complex, I will own that.

I’m Aditi Brennan Kapil, and I’m a playwright and a director and an actress. And I’ve been working in the Twin Cities for many, many years. And as a playwright, I guess I work nationally as much as I work locally.

I’m an immigrant twice over. My father was from India. My mother was from Bulgaria. And then they immigrated to Sweden which is where I grew up. I spent all my summers in Bulgaria with my grandparents, and then I spent my school year in Sweden.

And then when I went to college, I came here. I went to McAllister College and then I got married and I remained. So I’m an immigrant of several stages and an immigrant by birth, too.

WOMAN: (INAUDIBLE) is that the partnership that then didn’t work?

KAPIL: Yes. I was trying to give you a little context there, but it doesn’t have to be there. We could probably find a way to kill it.

I wrote a play called “Agnus Under the Big Top” and it will be premiering simultaneously at Mixed Blood where I’m directing and also at Long Wharf Theater in Connecticut with Eric Ting directing.

Right now, we’re all together at The Playwrights’ Center and we’re trying to get the script finalized.

KAPIL: It’s a play about immigrants in a U.S. city, and it’s a play about the ways in which we change when we change where we are. When we move from one place where we are a certain kind of person to another place where all of a sudden everything around us tells us that we’re a different kind of person.

KAPIL: A lot of this play comes from me, from just my thinking about the immigrant experience from how I feel myself be recontextualized when I get on a plane in Sweden, and I leave, and I land in Minneapolis. All of a sudden — like I feel like the person that I am here is actually quite separate from the person that I am there from the person that I am in Bulgaria where I’m still treated like the little tiny cousin.

You get treated that way and all of a sudden you’re, like, yes, ma’am. And that’s who you are then when you’re there. And all of that sort of mixed in to this pot and became this play.

WOMAN: I play the character of Agnus, and she’s an immigrant from Liberia and has been in the country for a few years.

A lot of times with plays you get the material, and you get a chance to work on it, do table work and sort of unpack what it’s about or what it could be about, but sometimes — actually often there’s a lot of guessing and decisions that you have to make because the playwright is not in the room.

So it’s been really nice to have Aditi at the table and it fills in the blanks without a lot of the guesswork.

KAPIL: Agnus is a Liberian immigrant who came to the U.S. many years ago, and she’s been working as a homecare worker. And her closest human connection is with her son who is back home in Liberia, and she’s sending money home and providing him with an education that he couldn’t afford if she had remained in Liberia.

This is an ensemble play so it’s about all the immigrants, but it’s her journey that is the catalyst for the journeys.

WOMAN: Aditi’s characters in writing, it has complexity in a way that’s really tangible. You can touch it, you know, it’s raw, it visceral, but it also makes you work.

KAPIL: Shipkov is the first character who got created for this play and he is a hybrid of my hard-drinking uncle in Bulgaria and the circus ringmaster that I saw when I took my daughter to a circus in Sofia, Bulgaria, and my dad who drove a subway train for many years at the end of his life in Stockholm, Sweden. And he is the subway driver who has very little connection with anyone else in his life, but he will entertain himself.

And Happy is the very young Indian man who has very recently arrived in America and is trying very hard to make a good impression and has been assigned to Shipkov as a trainee.

So, yes, that’s Shipkov and Happy, subway train drivers.

KAPIL: I got lucky enough to have an artistic home here. Almost immediately after graduating from college, Jack Reuler, the artistic director of Mixed Blood, cast me in something and over the years I became one of his company. It’s an informal company, but I became someone that works here often, and I think of this as my artistic home as a result.

And also I have The Playwrights’ Center which is my other artistic home. I got lucky twice.

I’m always blown away by the number of theaters that take on my work because it’s not easy. It’s not easy to cast. It’s not easy to fulfill all the technical requirements.

But they’re complex stories that I feel reflect the world that we live in. I also feel that theater audiences can sustain a more challenging aesthetic than we sometimes think they can. I think that we can bring in a deep, dense soundscape and have multiple languages and have the experience of that be fulfilling and exciting. And I think that people who go to theater are willing to work. They are willing to work for their — for their ah-ha moment.

JEFFREY BROWN: That story was produced by Angie Prindle of MN Original, a production of Twin Cities Public Television.

Being Italian in New Haven isn’t just about pizza. It’s about a rich, romantic family life, a deep cultural heritage and a strong connection to one’s past.

Through our production of John Patrick Shanley’s romantic comedy Italian American Reconciliation, we want to celebrate that rich cultural history by hearing stories and seeing photos of Italian-American life in New Haven.

We are looking for family photos of the Italian-American experience prior to 1980 to display on the set of Italian American Reconciliation and in the lobby prior to the show. Families together, weddings, christenings, first Holy Communions, holidays, first love, vacations – in short, the photos from a life richly lived – are perfect for the display. The photos should be e-mailed to italianamerican@longwharf.org. All photos should be hi-res, between 300-600 dpi. No original photos, please.

In addition, our artistic staff is interested in hearing stories about individuals’ and their families’ lives as Italian Americans. People interested in answering the question, “What does it mean to be Italian American today?” can submit short videos, written accounts, or come to the theatre Tuesday, April 5 and Tuesday, April 12 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. to be interviewed by a member of the staff. The stories and video will be used in the theatre’s lobby exhibits.

Long Wharf Theatre is partnering with IRIS – Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services – to seek essential home supplies for refugee families arriving in the United States.

A collection drive will take place at the theatre, located at 222 Sargent Drive, throughout the run of Agnes Under the Big Top, March 2 through April 3, 2011 on Stage II. Agnes Under the Big Top, a new play by Aditi Brennan Kapil, tells the story of a group of contemporary immigrants trying to make a new and better life in an unnamed American city.

In order to help people arriving in the country set up their homes, IRIS needs microwaves, pots, pans, kitchenware, including dishes, glasses and utensils. In addition, gently used sheets and towels, alarm clocks, tool kits, flashlights, first aid kits, and personal toiletries would be helpful. “This year IRIS expects to set up at least 30 apartments for new Americans in the New Haven area,” said Chris George, executive director of IRIS.

IRIS — Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services receives support from a wide range of public and private donors.  IRIS partners with faith-based groups, clubs, schools, colleges, and other nonprofits to welcome refugees and help them start new lives. 

IRIS resettles approximately 200 refugees each year. IRIS also provides some services to asylees and other immigrants. Currently, over half of IRIS’s refugee clients come from Iraq. Others come from Afghanistan, Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, and other countries.

For more information about IRIS, visit www.irisct.org or call 203-562-2095.

A metal monstrosity sprouted up in the hallway from the Green Room to Stage II this week – black steel boxes of pulleys, coils, chains and machinery tucked underneath the stairwell outside the stage door.

The boxes are called deck winches and are motors used to smoothly move four elements in the set of Agnes Under the Big Top – two wagons and two flying panels. The deck winches are connected to a computer called the automation control system.

While the set of Agnes, designed by Frank Alberino, resembles a big city subway platform, the setting of the play itself is fluid, moving from a moving train to old woman’s apartment and many places in between.

One would think that that working in smaller Stage II would be a respite for Long Wharf Theatre’s technical crews, having had three of the last four shows performed on the expansive Mainstage. Not so. “This is our biggest show this year,” said Mike Wyant, technical director.

Eshan Bay, who plays Happy in "Agnes Under the Big Top"

Before the actors for Agnes Under the Big Top even arrived at Long Wharf to begin rehearsals, they received an assignment from their director, Eric Ting, who gave them research topics like busking, the MTA, telemarketing, and, in Eshan Bay’s case, the cuisines of India, Bulgaria and Liberia.

Eshan decided to give us a taste of these cuisines on our first day of rehearsal.  He brought Bulgarian stuffed peppers, Tandoori chicken, and Liberian Rice Bread, which was the surprise hit of the tasting.  Below is the recipe he used.

Liberian Rice Bread is a staple of the diet in Liberia.  It is 1 box (14 ounces) Cream of Rice cereal, 1 cup sugar, 3 teaspoons ground ginger, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 cup milk, 3/4 cup vegetable oil, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 4 plaintains (or 4 slightly underripe bananas), mashed or chopped in the blender.  Bake at 350° in a 9”x13” pan for 30-45 minutes.

Enjoy!