SMOKE SCREEN: A SICILIAN/AMERICAN OPERA by Mary Ann Castronovo Fusco is set in northern New Jersey and Sicily in 1993. It is about an immigrant family that reunites to confront a health crisis and discovers there can be life after death.
Having given up on his American dream 20 years earlier, Nino Di Martino, a Sicilian lemon grower, returns to the United States for medical treatment and is housed once again by his sister, Sali. As this intimate drama unfolds, cross-cultural values clash, and regrets and resentments surface among Nino, Sali, and Nino’s children, Gianni and Lia. Straddling two worlds as they try to fulfill their aspirations and obligations, bound by their love for each other despite distance and differences, and struggling to express what they most need to say while they still have the breath, the family draws on lessons from the past to forge a new path forward.
A Concert Reading of a New Play by Mary Ann Castronovo Fusco
Directed by John Pietrowski
Sunday, October 30, 2022
3 pm
Recommended donation: $10
Tickets available at TicketLeap.com
MARY ANN CASTRONOVO FUSCO is an award-winning journalist specializing in Italian culture. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, to Sicilian immigrants, Mary Ann began her editorial career after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from New York University with a BA in journalism. While working as an editor, she earned a master’s degree in Italian with honors from Rutgers University. Smoke Screen is her first play. Mary Ann is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and Arba Sicula, which promotes Sicilian language and culture. Some of her published work is available at www.macfusco.com.