The Girlfriend

In honor of the new OnStage! Festival & Award, which premiered in Rome, Italy this past January, In Scena! features a special reading of the first OnStage Award winner for New American Plays:

The Girlfriend
Written by Leland Frankel
Directed by Carlotta Brentan
With Rob Glascott, Victoria Ratermanis and Carlotta Brentan

Olivia “Liv” Hughes was the most popular girl at Grace Hills High. Sylvia Merwin was one of its most put-down outcasts. And then Eddie Cleary brought his gun to school, and everything changed. Ten years later, these two women’s worlds have dramatically diverged: Sylvia lives a seemingly perfect life in the big city, with a terrific job and loving boyfriend, while Liv is a recovering addict. They arrange to meet under mysterious circumstances, and Liv reveals a shocking, forgotten artifact from their shared past. A shatteringly brutal showdown ensues as Sylvia and Liv attempt to reconcile their bloody history with their present lives. Innocence, guilt, honesty, deception…When evil deeds take place, who is truly responsible?

Leland Frankel (Playwright) is an award-winning playwright based in Los Angeles, California. He is a recent graduate of both the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and the American Repertory Theater Institute at Harvard University. His stage projects have been produced around the world, from New York City to London to Rome. Additionally, he is an award-winning film-maker and audio storyteller, as well as a producer of immersive theatre. Other recents projects of Leland’s include Love/Life, the first musical written for virtual reality, composed by Ryan Scott Oliver, and Masala Jones, the first Asian-American scripted podcast, starring performers from The Walking Dead, Last Comic Standing, and more.

Rob Glascott is an actor based in New York City. He is a proud graduate of Playhouse West Brooklyn Lab and is currently staring in the Brooklyn based series, “Green Thumbs.” 

Victoria Ratermanis is an actress, writer, director and theater maker. Born in Baltimore, and brought up overseas. Her childhood as a perpetual new kid taught her adaptability and helped to strengthen her imagination, and now she’s hoping to make a career of the tendency. She studied Meisner technique at Playhouse West in Brooklyn for 2 years, and graduated with a BFA in acting from Pace University before that. You can catch her in the first episode of “Fosse/Verdon” on FX as Karin or on Amazon Prime in the short film “Rose Garden.” Thank you and enjoy the show!

CARLOTTA BRENTAN is a theater artist specializing in fostering original play development as an actor, translator & producer. Recent acting: world premieres of Paolo Bignami’s The Journey I Never Made (Cherry Lane), Erik Ehn’s Clover (LaMaMa), Frank J. Avella’s Lured (Theater for the New City – also co-directed). Carlotta voices hundreds of projects from national commercials to audiobooks, in multiple languages. Proud member of KIT – Kairos Italy Theater, LPTW, and Executive Producer of In Scena! Italian Theater Festival. www.carlottabrentan.com

In ENGLISH.

This performance is part of the 2019 In Scena! Italian Theater Festival. Now in its 7th season, the festival presents a survey of the best Italian theatrical productions – for FREE – in all five NYC boroughs.