Found in Translation
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:
A brief medley of works found in translation with and by BellaLuna and friends, famous or otherwise!
La Veglia by Ungaretti (in Italian–English–Spanish)
Dove el Siélo by Attilio Carminati (in dialetto Veneziano–Italian)
Intermezzo Parolibero (Zang Tumb Tuumb) Futurist sintesi by Filippo T. Marinetti
Accidental Death of An Anarchist excerpt from play by Dario Fo.Adapted by Alan Cumming and Tim Supple
FRESCO excerpt from play by Lucia Frangioni with the BellaLuna Ensemble. Performed in Friulian–English
“Ti Amo” Translating a Song by Umberto Tozzi.
Puppet with Dialogue By Irving Layton. Poem in English and Italian.
PLUS
Original pieces devised, written and performed by the Ensemble and much more….
BellaLuna Ensemble
BellaLuna is Vancouver’s only Italian Canadian theatre company. We create physical, comic, socially poignant theatre in a variety of unique venues. Asa group of professional theatre artists our mandate is to produce entertaining work that transcends language barriers and challenges the audience to engage in the performance. Since 1998, BellaLuna has created and produced new plays, performed and roved at festivals, and hosted events in traditional and not-so-traditional venues.
PERFORMERS BIOS:
SUSAN BERTOIA is a professional theatre artist (actor, producer/director, devisor and teacher), who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Theatre from UBC. She is trained in commedia dell’arte and movement-based theatre from international institutions/instructors including: One Yellow Rabbit Theatre (Calgary); Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre (California); Jeremy James of Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil; I’ll Piccolo Teatro di Milano (Giorgio Strehler) and Donato Sartori (Padua). Her unique and engaging approach to teaching physical theatre and commedia dell’arte, make her a sought out teacher both in secondary schools and universities. Susan also serves as an Adjudicator at Drama and Speech Arts festivals and as a Theatre Artist-in-Residence both independently and through ArtStarts (BC). As an actor she has worked with Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre, Kamloops’ Western Canada Theatre, The Richmond Gateway Theatre and other well-established Vancouver theatre companies. Her devised work is extensively movement-based and includes her solo Plum and Other Colours and the all-woman circus CIRQUE POULE. Susan is the recipient of the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a lead Role (Mambo Italiano) and has received The Gordon Armstrong Theatre Artist Award for the development of her solo work. Susan is Artistic Director/Producer and Ensemble Performer with BellaLuna Productions. She has performed and devised almost all of BellaLuna’s original shows including FRESCO (written with Lucia Frangione) and FUTURISTI. Her FUTURISTI paper presented at the International Conference Futurist Drama + Dramaturgy (U of T) was published in 2011. She is also an active member of the Famee Furlane of Vancouver and mom to three feisty kids.
STEFANO GIULIANETTI is a seasoned performer with a unique ability to light up a room and fully engage his audiences with charm, humor, and poise. With 20 years as a successful actor in film and theatre under his belt, Stefano has specialized his acting in physical theatre and is in the actor roster for Cirque du Soleil as a physical performer. His training has included the Antonio Fava International Commedia program in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and he holds various award nominations and a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Axis Theatre’s The Emperor’s New Threads. Stefano has acted in over 30 professional plays with companies such as Chemainus Theatre Festival, Project X, Western Canada Theatre, Theatre North West, Carousel, Kaleidoscope, Théâtre la Seizième and has toured Axis Theatre’s renowned play The Number 14 across Canada From Whitehorse to Montreal. He has also appeared in numerous commercials, movies and TV shows including “Once Upon a Time”, “Supernatural” and guest star on the sitcom “Some Assembly Required”. Stefano speaks English, French, Italian and Spanish (and learning Polish!) and loves meeting people from around the world. He makes his home in beautiful Vancouver, Canada where he rides his Vintage Vespa Scooter and steals away to surf in Tofino as much as he can.
DIEGO BASTIANUTTI was born in Fiume, Italy and emigrated to North America in the early 50s. He holds an M.A. in International Finance and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. A professor of Spanish and Italian literatures at Queens University from 1970 to 1997, he was also the founder and director of the Italian Studies Summer Program in Venice from 1971 to 1980, and in the ‘80s in Florence and Rome. During his teaching tenure he also held the post of Honorary Vice Consul of Italy for Eastern Ontario (1978-1995). In the ‘80s he developed cutting edge computer programs for interactive language teaching. His academic publications deal mainly with the Spanish theatre of the XVI and XVII centuries. His book, A Major Selection of the Poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti, published in Toronto in 1997, received the “1998 John Glassco Prize” for best English translation of a foreign literary work. In the 1990s, he published two volumes of his own poetry: Il punto caduto and La barca in secco. His third volume, Per un pugno di terra / For a Fistful of Soil was published in 2006, in Milan, Italy as a bilingual edition, and in 2008, it was awarded the prestigious International Literary Prize “Scritture di Frontiera”, in Trieste, Italy. In 2015 he came out with a fourth volume of poetry “The Bloody Thorn”. His poetry and short stories have received numerous prizes and have appeared in literary journals and anthologies in the Americas, Europe, and Israel. He has been for years the Canadian Correspondent for the Italian magazine L’Amico d’Italia, in San José, Costa Rica. In his spare time he paints and plays tennis.
JOHN EMMET TRACY has worked for over thirty years as an actor extensively in theatre, film, television, commercials and voiceovers. He has performed in over eighty stage productions, including playing Hamlet in Hamlet (Japan tour) and recently performed at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, where he was selected as a member of the Globe’s International Actors’ Fellowship. He is the recipient of the 2013 Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Lead Role for his work in Pi Theatre’s production of Terminus. Additionally, he has recently performed in productions with Arts Club, Pacific Theatre and Blackbird Theatre. John is the creator of The 24 Hour Shakespeare Project, for which he performed continuously for 24 straight hours in all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays to raise money for British Columbia Children’s Hospital. He has appeared in over sixty film and television productions, and can be seen as a series regular in the Syfy Network series Olympus. Other TV/film credits include Steven Spielberg’s upcoming The BFG as well as Supernatural, If I Stay, Continuum, Smallville, The Killing, Psych and American Mary among many others. Additionally, he portrayed Thomas Jefferson in Assassin’s Creed III, the third installment of the multiple award winning and critically acclaimed video game series. He received his training at Rose Bruford College (Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre), the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, the National Shakespeare Conservatory in New York and from master teachers Uta Hagen, Lynn Redgrave, Edward Albee and Madeleine Sherwood.