Franco D'Alessandro is a New York-born playwright. In the mid 1990s he had eight one-act plays produced Off-Off Broadway in five years.
Career
Fresh from a sold-out run of The Sweet Life at Soho Rep/Walker Space in June 2001, Time to Storm in association with HERE and Michael Kagdis' CuriousArts presented Franco D'Alessandro's Worlds collide... at the bottom of a glass in December 2001 which celebrated sold-out run -three short plays by the award winning playwright. This innovative evening of fresh theater featured live musical performances by Josh Joplin, a sort of Orpheus, who served as a guide through the three plays. Is That You or Is That Me? is a futuristic story dealing with the triumph of love in the face of one-upmanship and rabid consumerism. And On...' is both a searing and poetic look at three generations coping with loss and love and how family influences our emotional mind-set. The evening culminates with Before and After, a double play, which has contemporaneous stories unfolding. It is alternately scathing political satire and drama, which examines life before and after the September 11th catastrophe. The production was dedicated to TTS founding member, actor Kevin Cleary, who was killed on 9-11. The evening's plays were directed by Jared Coseglia, Michael French, and Eva Minemar and presented by TTS Artistic Director John-Dylan Howard. The production ran from Wednesday December 19 through Sunday December 23, 2001 at the HERE Arts Center - the Dorothy Williams Theater In 2002, his two character play about Tennessee Williams and Anna Magnani, titled Roman Nights, premiered Off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth 2 Theatre in Union Square, produced by Suzanne Corso. The New York premiere production received respectable critical and commercial success for the writer. This three-act play went on to be produced in London in 2004, and again in Prague in 2006, where it has since been on a six-year sold-out tour of Eastern Europe. In 2011 the play opened in Buenos Aires as "Noches Romanas" under the direction of Oscar Barney Finn; and that year it was also performed in France, Italy and Spain as part of various international Tennessee Williams centenary celebrations. In 2011 the playwright created an alternate, shorter production version of that play entitled Tenn & Anna. In November 2011 Eva Minemar directed Italian actress Lidia Vitale in Solo Anna a new one-woman play D'Alessandro wrote which draws from his years of researching and writing about Anna Magnani; it played again to sold-out crowds in Los Angeles and Rome in 2012 and under the direction of Minemar it hopes to come to the New York stage in 2012 and tour in 2013. Roman Nights has also been adapted into a screenplay but the feature film is unproduced.
Poetry
In June 2009, Finishing Line Press published D'Alessandro's first collection of poetry entitled Supplications: Immediate Poems of Loss and Love. This first small collection of poems was endorsed by the Italian American Writers Association and was nominated for a New England PEN Award. A newly completed play, White Elephants Dancing The Flamenco, is inspired by an Ernest Hemingway short story. "Stranger Love: Five Short Plays" was published in November 2010 and these plays are currently being taught by drama professors in five countries.
Academia
Since 2002, D'Alessandro has taught drama at public schools in New York City. He holds two master's degrees, and is a graduate of Fordham University. D'Alessandro is also an adjunct and visiting college professor of drama and writing at several universities and institutes, including summer Master Classes in Rome.
