On Monday 20 April 2026, in the spaces of the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò of New York University, will go on stage “Tutti in Scena (The Show)”, a new theatrical work of the Kairos Italy Theater directed by Laura Caparrotti, founder and artistic director of the company. The appointment, scheduled for 19:00 and entirely in English, is part of the cultural programming of the New York institution that for years hosts projects related to contemporary Italian culture and its diffusion in the United States. The show will be followed by a celebration dedicated to Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò, a central figure in the promotion of Italian culture in New York and from which Casa Italiana takes its name, on the occasion of the centenary of its birth.
“Tutti in Scena” is developed from theatrical texts written by Italian immigrants between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, period in which neighborhoods like Little Italy were one of the main points of approach of Italian migration in the United States. According to historical data, more than four million Italians emigrated to the United States between 1880 and 1920, with a significant concentration in New York. Here an intense cultural production was born in Italian, which included newspapers, literature and popular theatre: expressive forms that allowed communities to tell their social condition, often marked by precarious works, discrimination and linguistic difficulties. The project directed by Caparrotti recovers this heritage, transforming it into a contemporary dramaturgy that showcases the material difficulties of migratory experience, but also the cultural and artistic vitality that has derived it.
The cast, composed by Laura Caparrotti, Elisabetta D’Avenia, Andrea Galatà, Alice Lussiana Parente, Mario Merone, Elena Sartor, Clara Bocchino and Massimo Zordan, plays a series of paintings set during a day in the Little Italy in the early 20th century. The system is the ensemble piece, with a fragmented structure that returns a plurality of voices and points of view, in line with the tradition of community theatre. The work represents the first public presentation of a project developed from a previous version of 2021, supported by the Italian House.
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