Wedding Night Published

My short play Wedding Night, which previously had a staged reading in D.C. at Anacostia Playhouse, is now published in PSA, the journal of the Pirandello Society of America.

The play is freely adapted from Luigi Pirandello’s short story “Prima notte,” which was first published in 1900. It follows a young woman saying goodbye to her mother on her wedding night. Both know the coming marriage will not be ideal, but as darkness descends, new possibilities emerge that no one ever anticipated.

My play is included alongside three other dramas also inspired by Pirandello short stories. These are If by Robert Brophy adapted from the story “Se…” (“If…”), Vilomah (a Sanskrit word meaning “against the order of things”) by Elisabetta Bracer adapted from “Quando si comprende” (“War”), and To the Moon and Back by Joshua Piper adapted from “Una Giornata” (“A Single Day”).

Early in his career, Pirandello began writing plays that were considered Theatre of the Grotesque. These plays used what he called “umorismo” which is a type of painful laughter that accompanies a sense of tragic bewilderment. Stefano Boselli, the Theatre and Performance Outreach Officer for PSA, mentioned Wedding Night’s connection to umorismo in a forward to the four plays.

Boselli, who also goes by the stage name Stebos, is a talented director in addition to being a scholar. He has directed original and classic works, including plays originally performed by the Theatre du Grand-Guignol.