WHEN MEN WERE MEN

QUANDO GLI UOMINI ERANO UOMINI

STAGED READING IN ENGLISH

Flavia is the owner of a detective agency. In 1996 an elderly woman named Giulia Graf hired her to investigate Pietro Montali, a soldier who went missing during the Second World War. A few years later, Flavia tells the story of what she found out to a journalist. The investigation, following the thread of the official documents, testimonies and correspondence of Montali, leads Flavia to shed light on a dark and tragic past. At the same time, the flashbacks of Giulia and Pietro’s life tell of a love suffocated by the advent of the Racial Laws. A love that, thanks to Flavia’s work, finds a new, unexpected, ending.

PLAYWRIGHT

Luca Garello is an actor, playwright and director. Luca got his acting diploma at the “L’attore” Theater School in Rome, directed by Giuseppe Argirò, specializing in courses by Maurizio Panici and Paolo Triestino. After that, he worked a san actor, director and light designer, being aware that theater must be known and mastered from all its angles. And knowing that they were the basis to what had always been his greatest inclination: baing a playwright. Isnce 2009, he fully dedicated himself to playwrighting. 

CAST

Annie G. Levi is a theatre-maker and director whose work often revolves around mythology, historical turning points, and scientific breakthroughs. Her pieces include The CCC Project’s Space Rock | Door Stop, the story of the Hodges Meteorite and Tree Army; The Lativia Project’s Daughter of the Sun and The Persephone Project’s SIX SEEDS. Levy is a founding member of the World Wide Lab (WWL), an international director’s collective and theatre laboratory. With WWL, she has created work for the Irondale Center in Brooklyn, Teatro Due in Rome, Syros Institute on the Greek Island of Syros, Art Zone 453 in Taipei, Taiwan, and for the Superior Theatre Festival in Thunder Bay, Canada. She has also created and directed new work with theatre incubator warner | shaw, the Northwood Theatre Company, and various other theatres in her hometown of NYC, including City Center, Dixon Place, HERE, The New Ohio Theatre, Theatre at the Tank, Fringenyc, and Access Theatre. Levy is the recipient of a FAIR assistantship at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a residency at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, Paul Artist Residency at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Uptown/Downtown Artist. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab and an associate member of SDC. She serves as the artistic director of Emerson Stage at Emerson College. www.annieglevy.com

Leana Gardella is a Fight Director, Intimacy Choreographer, and Performer. Recent/Upcoming projects: Fight and Intimacy Direction for Belfast Girls at Irish Repertory Theatre, she just wrapped filming a Costar for a soon-to-be-announced Paramount+ Special, and her last time on stage was in the NYTimes Critic’s Pick Zoetrope with Exquisite Corpse Company. www.leanagardella.com

Benjamin Morang is a New York-based actor in his senior year at Pace University’s BFA acting program for film, TV, Voiceover, and Commercial. Most recently he co-starred in the feature film Rally Caps (Lee Cipolla – Post Production). Ben began in musical theater and has been performing and training from a young age in instrumental music, vocal performance, improvisation, baseball, as well as 12 years of martial arts. Ben is also a filmmaker documenting and producing content for local New York artists.

Joan Lunoe last appeared as an ensemble member of the National Theatre’s production of The Lehman Trilogy at The Park Avenue Armory; has also worked at LaMaMa E.T.C.; Ensemble Studio Theater; New Dramatists; The Bardy Bunch at Theatre at St. Clements; GoneIn60 One Minute Play Festival (@Brooklyn College & Viaduct Theatre/Yorkshire, UK). She has been the narrator for ClassicalCafe’s chamber music productions of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and T.S. Eliot’s Practical Cats. For 24 years she was an audio book narrator for the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (New York Public Library/Library of Congress).

Maria Portman Kelly danced with the Louisville Ballet, Susana B. Williams Modern Dance Company, and Ballet Español, and has performed as an actor with Shakespeare Theatre Company, The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and Actors Theatre of Louisville, among others. For more than a decade, she has supported Dance for PD®, a program of the Mark Morris Dance Group that offers dance classes for people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) as its Programs and Engagement Manager. Maria holds a BFA from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Medgar Evers College, and is graduating this spring with an MA in Disability Studies from CUNY.

Matthew A.J. Gregory is an interdisciplinary theatre artist. He has directed productions at venues around NYC including NYU, Theater for the New City, the cell and the Culture Project. He has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Saratoga Shakespeare Company and Off-Broadway at the Mint Theater. His costume designs have been seen at the Juilliard School, the Wheeler Opera House and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. He has been on the faculty at NYU, The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute and CUNY – Kingsborough. Currently, Matthew is on the faculty at AADA and the Waterwell Drama Program at PPAS.

James Prendergast has appeared off-Broadway in productions at TACT; The Mint; Playwrights Horizons; Ensemble Studio Theatre; New Georges. Regionally at Old Globe; Hangar; Dorset Theatre; Shadowland; Allenberry; Mountain Playhouse; Old Log; Public Theatre of Maine; Arts Center of Coastal Carolina; Woodstock. Also acted in 6 feature films, numerous primetime and daytime TV shows, and countless commercials and industrials.