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Hellfire Pass
Hellfire Pass
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Author: Vittorio Rossi Publisher: Talonbooks (cover image may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 128 Pub. Date: 2007 ISBN-10: 0889225648 ISBN-13: 9780889225640 Cast Size: 2 female, 5 male
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About
the Play:
Hellfire Pass is a full-length drama by Vittorio Rossi.
The time, Autumn, 1956. The city, Chicago. Hellfire Pass, Part
1 of A Carpenter's Trilogy, follows Silvio Rosato, a carpenter and
decorated World War II veteran who has journeyed from his native
Italy to Chicago via Montréal in order to meet the family he never
knew. He brings with him a simple request. What he gets in return is
much more than he bargained for.
Hellfire Pass is Part 1 of the autobiographical A
Carpenter's Trilogy; three powerful plays, inspired by true events,
about an Italian family finding new life in Montréal over the course
of 40 years. It is 1956, and Silvio Rosato, a carpenter and 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. At first glance a classic
tale of immigrant families, of the lives they build in the new world
and the lives they leave behind in the old, there is something more
at play here than the conflict of a nostalgia for a romanticized past
confronting the excitement of a brighter future. Which of Eduardo's
families is "legitimate" – the one he abandoned in Italy
or the one he raised in America? He has constructed an identity based
on a fabric of self-serving opportunist lies for both, fictions that
rapidly disintegrate under the steady gaze and relentless demand of
what appears to be his only legitimate heir. Refusing to acknowledge
Eduardo as his father, Silvio dislocates the question of legitimacy
from one of paternity and history to one of individual responsibility
and action. But it's not just Eduardo that's in trouble here. Can
Silvio attain the legitimacy he considers his due without destroying
the members of both families? And does he have the right to create
his own sense of legitimacy at the cost of destroying the lives of
all those around him? If so, how is he any less of a monster than his
father? This mystery begins Hellfire Pass, part one of
Vittorio Rossi's autobiographical A Carpenter's Trilogy, A
Chronicle in Three Plays.
Hellfire Pass premiered in 2006 at the venerable Centaur
Theatre, the oldest English-language theatre in Montréal, and won
the Montréal English Critic Circle Award (MECCA) for Best New Text.
Cast: 2 female, 5 male
What people say:
"A powerful, memorable
drama…" — Variety
"Hellfire Pass
is what great theater can be – humorous, powerful and poignant…
Rossi's writing and storytelling are effective and psychologically
apt." — Times Argus
"A well-structured play with
memorable characters." — Montréal Mirror
About the Playwright:
Vittorio Rossi is a playwright, actor, director and
screenwriter who grew up in the Ville-Émard neighbourhood of
Montréal and still lives there. He has established himself as a
significant Italian-Canadian voice on the English-Canadian stage. His
plays have been produced in Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver,
New York City, Boston, Syracuse, and The Stratford Festival in
Ontario.
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