First U.S. Reading of Lampedusa Beach

Playwright Lina Prosa will visit the University of Pittsburgh on March 14 and 15 for the first U.S. readings of her play Lampedusa Beach. The play, which dramatizes an African migrant woman’s death at sea, is the first part of Prosa’s Trilogy of the Shipwrecked (Trilogia del Naufragio). The readings, which will be held in the Stephen Foster Memorial’s Henry Heymann Theatre, are free and open to the public.

Viviana Altieri, director of Pittsburgh’s Mondo Italiano cultural center and language school, will read the play in Italian at 7 p.m., March 14. Adia Augustin, a freshman in Pitt’s Department of Theatre Arts, will read an English translation at 7 p.m., March 15. Both performances will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Prosa.

“Lina Prosa’s work stages the story of Mediterranean migration in a very human way, but in a way that taps into other modes of storytelling: the epic, the historical. We’re very excited about opportunities like these to present important cultural work that connects our students with the community and puts both groups in touch with a contemporary artist talking about important current global events,” said Lina Insana, an associate professor of Italian and the chair of Pitt’s Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures.

Among the most sought-after playwrights in Italy and Europe, Prosa directs the Teatro Studio “Attrice/Non,” a space of theatrical exploration within the Amazon Project (Myth-Science-Theatre). She is the first female Italian writer and director to have her work performed at the Comédie-Française of Paris. Her texts have been translated and published in French, English, Portuguese, Catalan, and Croatian. Prosa received the Annalisa Scafi Award and Anima Award for Lampedusa Beach. She lives in Palermo, Italy.

The readings are the finale of the “mediterranean [meta]geographies,” a series of lectures, conversations, screenings, and presentations of creative work focusing on the Francophone and Italian Mediterranean. The series has been presented by Pitt’s Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures and sponsored by the Dietrich School, Year of the Humanities in the University, Humanities Center, and European Studies Center.