Dario D'Ambrosi Appears In TUTTI NON CI SONO/WE ARE NOT ALONE At Cherry Lane Theater

Italy's Dario D'Ambrosi, originator of the theatrical movement called Teatro Patologico (Pathological Theater), will perform a single night in his breakthrough work, "Tutti Non Ci Sono/ We are Not Alone," May 7 at 7:00 PM at the Cherry Lane Theater, 38 Commerce Street, as the opening event of the sixth annual In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, presented by Kairos Italy Theater and KIT Italia (https://inscenany.com/). The festival will feature a record twelve shows, brought over from Italy to NYC.

"We are Not Alone," a solo play written and performed by Mr. D'Ambrosi, is performed in English. The play was an audience sensation when produced by La MaMa in 1980 as D'Ambrosi's American debut and has never been seen in the U.S. since. It catapulted Mr. D'Ambrosi to fame, drawing around-the-block lines of theatergoers for its entire run. Andy Warhol attended the piece three times. The piece is about a psychiatric inmate who is victimized by neglect in the outside world. It was written as a reaction to the Italian Mental Health Act of 1978, which was the first law to reform the psychiatric system there and ultimately closed the country's mental hospitals, supposedly replacing them with a range of community-based services, including settings for acute in-patient care. Italy's actions roughly coincided with Geraldo Rivera's 1972 Willowbrook expose, which prompted New York State to resort to community placement for the now designated "Willowbrook Class." Deinstitutionalization here resulted in patients being dumped into community facilities that were supposed to care for them but never materialized. Untreated chronic patients, released in huge numbers, drifted to SROs and welfare hotels. When the low-income housing stock dried up in the 1980s, mentally ill people migrated into the streets. So D'Ambrosi's heart-rendering appeal, which was created for Italian audiences, struck a receptive nerve in New York.

The play was shocking in its time. A schizophrenic man leaves a mental hospital in New Jersey and arrives on the streets of New York. Clad in a gown, pajamas and a pair of slippers, he arrives at the theater. He speaks about a voice in his head telling him to kill himself, lamenting "Every night the voice says 'throw yourself out the window.' Why was I born with this voice in my head? It doesn't want to go back to sleep. Please help me make it sleep again." The patient informs the audience he needs to have sex and begs women to take off their clothes. In the end, the audience is frustrated and a doctor appears from the corner of the theater, who resolves to lobotomize the patient. This touches the audience's hearts because they realize that in the beginning of the play, they were afraid of the man, but by the end, they are ashamed that they did not help him.

Despite its impact in 1980, the piece was undiscovered by the press. (Critical acclaim for D'Ambrosi was to come later.) So theater writers are invited to this In Scena! production.

Free admission but registration required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/we-are-not-alone-tickets-44431608136