Mario Fratti Award winners
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2014 – Carlotta Corradi
VIA DEI CAPOCCI
A real street in a working-class neighborhood in the heart of Rome, Via dei Capocci is historically known for its prostitutes and legendary landladies who rent them small rooms known as Neopolitan “bassi.” An open-hearted depiction of women’s lives, the play mixes scenes from the present with flashbacks to the1950s, when two young prostitutes search for ways to survive in a brothel.
2015 – Pier Lorenzo Pisano
MATER FAMILIAS
A powerful drama with exact dialogue and sharply drawn relationships, the play begins with a mother and son’s desperate need to commit a crime in order to let their family survive. From there, it moves backwards through the decades, as three generations come into focus: their dreams, regrets, and what might have been.
2016 – Emanuele Aldrovandi
BUTTERFLIES
Two sisters whose favorite pastime is a dangerous game: whoever holds the butterfly hairpin can ask the other one to do anything. Butterflies is a tale of personal growth and sisterly love in which self-discovery is not always accompanied by greater understanding of the other person. Employing a crystal clear, refined theatrical language, the play develops along an unpredictable, almost mysterious structure, while its characters’ direct and effective dialogue paints a universally touching picture.
2017 – Paolo Bignami
THE LAND OF SWOLLEN FACES
A monologue that tells the story of a workplace accident in Italy, The Land of Swollen Faces is actively involved in denouncing a world that ignores human rights. Through the simple narration of tragic events by a single voice of heart-breaking lyricism and lightness, the play reminds us that change may begin with an individual, in the face of the reckless arrogance of the powers that surround him.
2018 – Chiara Boscari & Marco Di Stefano
THE CITY RISES
A changing city and its inhabitants; victims and perpetrators. A mayor, a construction worker, an old trade unionist, a young barista, a Tunisian girl, a stubborn journalist, a young delivery boy. Stories that intersect and then disperse again.
2019 – Tobia Rossi
HIDE AND SEEK
Giò is a gay teenager firmly convinced that nobody loves him. He therefore decides to escape from that hostile world and hide in his secret shelter. Everyone is looking for him for days without success, until Mirko, one of his classmates, finds him by accident during a walk. Giò begs him to preserve his secret, making him an accomplice to his plan, which forces their relationship to take an unexpected turn.
2020 – Giorgia Brusco
CRUMBS OF JOY
Two elderly people live alone. Due to a banal accident, they involve an unaware passerby in their affairs. She is projected into their world made of silences, memories, disappointments, but also trivial gestures of love, which are nothing more than a desperate request for attention. At a certain point, the vision turns upside down, highlighting hidden shadows and immense pain, behind the apparent superficiality.
2021 – Luca Garello
WHEN MEN WERE MEN
Flavia is the owner of a detective agency. In 1996, an elderly woman hired her to investigate Pietro Montali, a soldier who was missing during the Second World War. A few years later Flavia will tell a journalist the story of that research: an investigation that, following the thread of the official documents, testimonies and correspondence of Montali, will lead Flavia to shed light on a dark and tragic past, a love suffocated by the advent of the Racial Laws.
2022 – Andrea Cioffi
APARTMENT 2B
In Apartment 2B lives Aimo, a thirty-year-old like many others: precarious work, rented apartment, unpaid bills and a disturbing vision with human features but monstrous proportions, that keeps appearing around him, pills in hand, suggesting the way to go: suicide. His only contact with the outside is a shower of voice messages haunting him with deadlines and responsibility, until the apartment door opens, letting new people enter the studio and his life.