Kirjahaku

Canada. 1940. In a time and country fraught with the uncertainties of war, Prime Minister MacKenzie King calls for the destruction of any "subversive elements" on the nation's soil. The Act is supported by the majority of Canadians: anxious, patriotic and "intolerant" of fascism. After Canada officially declares war with Italy, Romano, a recent immigrant, is arrested without charge in his own home. Torn from the arms of his terrified and pregnant wife Maria, Romano is held against his will with hundreds of men of Italian descent at a prisoner-of-war camp in Petawawa, Ontario. These individuals were never officially charged with any crime. Playing out the ironies of a government acting "to protect its citizens," Paradise by the River details the struggle to preserve morality in a nation and in a time seemingly intent on its demise. Cast of two women and eight men.

It is 1956, and Silvio Rosato, a decorated World War II veteran, shows up at the house of his father, Eduardo Rosato, who had abandoned him and his mother in Italy in 1920 to start a new life and family for himself in Chicago. Silvio's Italian-American half-siblings, Eddie and Ida, are fascinated by this stranger who has suddenly appeared in their lives. Handsome, assured, and accomplished, there is something not quite right, something sinister about this visitor, with his air of familiarity and the distant, impenetrable look in his eyes. This mystery begins "Hellfire Pass", part one of Rossi's autobiographical "A Carpenter's Trilogy, A Chronicle in Three Plays."

At first glance a classic tale of immigrants to North America, there is something more to Vittorio Rossi's autobiographical A Carpenter's Trilogy than the conflict of a romanticized past confronting the excitement of a brighter future. Carmela's Table, part two of this chronicle, finds Silvio, the decorated Italian war hero, settled in a new suburb of Montreal with his wife, their three children and his mother, applying for immigrant status in 1957. Bristling with a cold and violent sense of outrage at the wartime horrors he survived in North Africa; his prison camp experiences in England; a bigamist father who abandoned his young family to emigrate to Chicago; betrayed by his mother who raised him and his sister in the humiliating poverty of their Italian village; it is easy for the audience to empathize with Silvio's cold-hearted need for retribution, lashing out at everyone and everything around him as the play opens.While Rossi's dramatic portraits of Silvio's manipulative mother, Filomena, his inexplicably loyal wife, Carmela, and their understanding and supportive neighbours, Neva and Dave, are finely drawn variations on what have become pop-culture stereotypes of Italian immigrants, they clearly exist to allow Rossi to peel back the complex layers of Silvio's psyche--to reveal what drives him to his bi-polar excesses of emotion: the willfully constructed memory, the unassailable sense of honour, the judgmental dismissal of what he perceives are the faults of others, and an intransigent refusal to acknowledge his complicity in the creation of his own problems--all the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In the play's final cathartic scenes, however, Silvio is forced to understand that to have consistently chosen not to act on what he has always known has also been a choice--one that now finally threatens to overwhelm and destroy his family.

In 1956, Silvio Rosato, a decorated World War II veteran, shows up at the house of his bigamist father, Eduardo Rosato, who had abandoned him and his mother in Italy in 1920, starting a second life and family for himself in Chicago. Handsome, assured and accomplished, there is something sinister about the young Silvio, with his air of familiarity and the distant, impenetrable look in his eyes. This mystery begins Hellfire Pass, part one of Rossi's autobiographical A Carpenter's Trilogy: A Chronicle in Three Plays. At first glance a classic tale of North American immigrants, there is more to Vittorio Rossi's tale than the conflict of a romanticized past confronting the excitement of a brighter future. Carmela's Table, part two of this trilogy, finds Silvio settled in a new suburb of Montreal with his wife, their three children and his mother, the young family applying for immigrant status in 1957. With part three, The Carpenter, Silvio's life comes to an end -- but not without a fight. As events from Silvio's past come back to torment him, his hauntingly staged hallucinations grow more frequent, his moments of lucidity become fewer and fewer.When Carmela stares down her son and two daughters in a showdown over whether the Alzheimer's-stricken Silvio should be placed in palliative care, the heart-wrenching but beautifully cathartic story of a family, including Silvio, coming to grips with itself unfolds with an unmistakably poignant honesty. Set between 2002 when Silvio's terminal dementia is diagnosed and his final days at a hospice in 2004, there is something timelessly old-fashioned in Rossi's stagecraft as he cuts through the Gordian Knot of this family's ties. Silvio's son, Luciano, the family chronicler who struggles with the process of writing the very story we are watching, is the trilogy's one overt touch of post-modernism.

How does the Canadian film industry measure up? Drawn from his own experiences, Vittorio Rossi's new comedy-drama exposes the bureaucratic institution that is the Canadian film industry, and we follow the character Michael Moretti, a veteran playwright, as he struggles to get his new play, Romeo's Rise, turned into a movie. Michael must decide between a multi-million dollar offer from his Canadian-friend-turned-movie-producer Jake Henry, or a low-budget offer from an independent producer in Los Angeles. Jake's deal promises him generous financial support if he survives the editing process with a senior script writer from the Canadian Film Fund. The American deal isn't so lucrative, but he'd retain complete artistic control. Or a low budget offer from an independent producer from Los Angeles that would let him retain total artistic control. In reference to the Charbonneau Commission, a public inquiry into the corruption of the management of public construction contracts, the envelope of the play's title is the government's unofficial agreement to see that Jake's project would get funded.Rossi asks the question at the heart of artistic affairs: Will Moretti take the big bucks and compromise his work, or will he stand firm in his artistic and personal integrity? Cast of 5 men and 2 women.