It’s Rome in 1938, extreme nationalism is on the rise, out-of-touch politicians are in power and minorities are lost in between the cracks of a deluded and fractured government.
The political upheaval present in Por Piedad Teatro and PlayCo’s ‘A Special Day’ is eerily familiar to today’s political climate, which is why the play’s star Ana Graham felt it was fitting to revisit this poignant story.
“We did the play for the first time in 2013 and we thought the story was still relevant,” Graham says. “This idea of fascism was kind of having a big comeback in Europe and the United States. We wanted to talk about how fascism is more than just a political movement but a state of mind. But all these years later we feel that this story is even more relevant today than it was back then.”
‘A Special Day’ is based on the beloved 1977 Ettore Scola film starring Italian film icons Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. The production, like the film, follows a chance encounter between neighbours Antonietta, an exhausted and lonely housewife and Gabriele, a former radio announcer who has lost his job because of his sexuality; who meet on the fateful day of May 6, 1938 when Hitler visited Mussolini in Rome. While most of Rome is out and about celebrating the special day, these two outsiders find themselves once again on the margins of the fascist regime.
Graham and her real-life partner Antonio Vega play the roles of Antonietta and Gabriele respectively along with all the other supporting roles including Antonietta’s husband, children and infamous parrot. “We love the film and we came up with the idea to do the whole film with just two actors,” Graham says. “[When we did the first show] we were moving to New York and we didn’t know anybody so we wanted to do something that could be self-directed, where we direct one another and just see how we could stage something like that movie which has very little props.”
Image © Carol Rosegg
Using just two pieces of chalk, Graham and Vega recreate the apartment and the necessary objects.
“We are very theatrical in this way. If we need a window, we just draw the window and together with the audience we interact with the window and then if we need a telephone we draw a telephone. It’s a very fun way to stage the film. It’s a comedy but at the same time it’s very serious, especially in the way it speaks about the world but at the same time we are not taking it too seriously.”
‘A Special Day’ was the first show the couple directed each other in and Graham jokes it almost lead to a divorce. “When you’re directing at the same time it’s like having two minds and you have to see it from two sides. We became really fascist ourselves with the way we were directing each other, until we realised we were talking about the opposite. Really this play is about being tolerant and thinking about each other.”
