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ANNOUNCEMENTS
"The Angelina Project": a play about three generations of women dealing with murder and memories.
On the evening of Monday, May 27th, a play reading will be held of "The Angelina Project," organized by Women's Studies at the University of Toronto at Scarborough and co-sponsored by the Canadian Women's Studies Association, the Canadian Historical Association, the Status of Women Office, and the Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Studies.
This play, written and directed by Frank Canino and produced by the Preface Theatre, is loosely based on the article "Murder, Womanly Virtue and Motherhood: The Case of Angelina Napolitano, 1911-22" by Karen Dubinsky and Franca Iacovetta (The Canadian Historical Review 72:4,1991). The script of the play was published by Guernica Press in 2000.
The performance will begin at 7:30 P.M. on May 27th in Room 179, University College, University of Toronto. Admission is free.
Here are some notes about the play: You're forty-something. Your marriage and career are falling apart. Then you find out that your grandmother axed her husband to death. Secrets and lies --- like a corpse buried beneath the house -- made you what you are today, shaping your character and relationships in ways you never dreamed of.
The Angelina Project is based on an actual event: at the turn of the century Angelina Napolitano, a 28-year-old Italian immigrant, killed her abusive husband as he lay asleep on Easter Sunday.
Within a month she was on trial -- which lasted one morning. Condemned to hang, her sentence was deferred until she gave birth to her fifth child in jail. A reprieve saved her life, but she spent 11 years in jail. What happened to her and her children after that?
Frank Canino creates an imaginative conjecture about what happened to Angelina and the next three generations of her family. Along the way, he explores issues of abuse, violence, prejudice and media hype.
"There's no such thing as the past being over. It keeps happening again and again --- right here and now."
Playwright Frank Canino has worked in Canada and the U.S. as director, actor, stage manager, teacher, and dramaturge. His writing projects range from scripts for the NFB Video Drama Workshop to musicals and dramas. He is currently planning a series of plays about the Italian experience in North America.
Highlights from reviews of "The Angelina Project":
A brilliant combination of historical fact and liberal generalization, "The
Angelina Project" follows the stressful, thankless work of Amelia Covello
as she juggles with a family that's falling apart and a career that could be
in jeopardy as she attempts to finish her historical thesis on her family's
past. ...........My recommendation is to go to The Chance Theater to see "The
Angelina Project". It's a frank, mature piece of theatrical work that will
strike a chord in your heart and stir
the soul with a clever script and acting that is downright luminary. --"Chief"
Jack Hawk, KTST FM Radio, June 26, 2001
Regardless of its tendency for overstatement, "The Angelina Project"
is powerful material that requires powerful acting. The play offers many moments
of poetry ...... as in the final seconds, when Angelina softly says, "Reason
calls a truce at last." [Orange County Register]
The script is a combination of historical facts and imaginative conjecture,
directed by Darryl Hovis, also an actor with the Chance. Originally scheduled
for production last year, it premiered at the innovative Chance on June 15.
Its appeal allows overlooking a cast with mixed acting abilities. What it lacks
in polish, it more than makes up in content and is a definitely must-see of
the season from our littlegem of an Anaheim Hills-Yorba Linda backyard theater.
Anne-Margret Bellavoine of Northern Lights, June 29, 2001
Yoland Cohen, Profession Infirmiere: Une histoire des soins dan les hopitaux
du Quebec (Montreal, U of Montreal Press)
Myra Rutherdale, Women and the White Man's God: Gender and Race in the Canadian Mission Field (UBC Press 2003)
Margaret Conrad, a highly resepcted and prolific historian of women and Martime Canadian history has been named as Senior Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Studies at the University of New Brunswick.
Adele Perry's On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race and the Making of British Columbia, 1849-1871 (Toronto Uof Toronto Press) won the Canadian Historical Association's Clio regional prize for British Columbia for 2002 and co-won the American Historical Association Pacific Branch Book Award.
Chistina Simmons, Women's Power in Sex Radical challenges in the early 20th US," Feminist Studies 2002.
Myra Rutherdale, Women and the White Man's God: Gender and Race in the CAnadian Mission Field (UBCPress 2002)
Maragret Conrad and James Hitler's Atlantic Canada: A Region in hte Making (Toronto Oxford UP 2001) won the CHA;s Clio regional prize for Atlantuc Canada
Alexandra Palmer's Couture and Commerce: The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s (University of British Columbia Press 2001) won the CHA's Clio regional prize for Ontario
Marlene Epp's "Pioneerrs, Refugees, Exiles, and Transnationals: Gendering Diaspora in an Ethno-Religious Context," won the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (JCHA) best article prize, published 2001
Susan Dalton, "Gender and the Shifting Ground of Revolutionary Politics: The Case of Madame Roland," Canadian Journal of History 36 Aug 2001 won the CHA's Hilda Neatby prize for the best English language article published in Canada in the history of women and gender as it relates to women.
The Neatby prize for French-language went to Mecheline Dumont, "Un camp bien clos: l'histoire des femmes au Quebec," Atlantis 25:1 fall 2000
Co-winners of the CHA's best article on the history of sexuality were Becki
L. Ross, "Bumping and Grinding on the Line: making Nudity Pay," Labour-le
Travail 46 (fall 2000) and Franca Iacovetta, "The Sexual Politics of Moral
Citizenship and Containing 'Dangerous' Foreign Men in Cold War Canada, 1950s-1960s,"
Histoire Sociale-Social History 33 (Nov
2002)
The conference New Directions in Comparative and Transnational History (sponsored
by the Bissell-Heyd-Associates Chair and the Centre for the Study of the United
States, University of Toronto, May 2002) featured several labour history projects
including work on women-centred and gendered transnational labour and working-class
history projects, including Elisabeth Esch, New York University, "Globalism's
Challenge to Comparative history: The Ford Motor Company in the US, Brazil,
and South Africa, And Donna Gabbacia and Franca Iacovetta eds., Women, Gender
and Transnational Lives: Italian Workers of the World (now out, UTP 2002)
-compiled by Franca Iacovetta