Mambo Italiano by Steve Galluccio

Author:Steve Galluccio [Galluccio, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Drama, Steve Galluccio, Canadian theatre, family, Italian immigrants, multiculturalism, gay culture, Michel Tremblay, Comedy
ISBN: 978-1-77201-062-6
Publisher: Talonbooks
Published: 2016-02-12T00:00:00+00:00

ACT TWO

Scene 1: Nino’s Office

Special goes up on NINO, who is dressed in a suit and tie. He sits at his desk, buried in paperwork. He looks up and talks to the audience.

NINO

I lost my father when I was seventeen. And if I sit quietly long enough, I can still hear my mother screaming. Screaming her pain out loud.

(goes back to work, beat, addresses audience) About three months before my high school graduation, they found something on my father’s lungs. A spot, my mother said. We had planned our summer vacation for right after I finished school that summer to celebrate my graduation: his only child had made it through high school and was going off to college to become somebody …

(goes back to work, beat, addresses audience) When my father came here from Italy, he got a job washing windows for 75 cents an hour. So he had to spend his days looking inside office towers at people being somebodies, while he was outside being no one. Scrubbing the dirt and grime so that the somebodies could be seen better.

(goes back to work, beat, addresses audience) Turns out the “spot” was cancer. And it spread so quickly that within a month my father was not my father anymore. He wasn’t the healthy, powerful man that had raised me. Within a month the cancer had carried him away and in his place was a powerless, frightened being who barely had the strength to speak. But speak he did … “Take care of your mother,” he’d say. “Go to school, get married, and dance at your grandkids’ wedding for me.”

(goes back to work, beat, addresses the audience) We never sent him to a hospital. Nor hired a private nurse. Not even in the final days. Me and my mom took care of him. Bathed him, shaved him, fed him. Gave him all the pills that made him sicker than he already was. I thought that if he took his medicine he’d get better, but …

(goes back to work, beat, addresses audience) So graduation time came along. I didn’t wanna go, but he insisted. When I got home, I showed him my diploma. And for a breath of a moment he became the healthy, powerful man that had raised me. For a breath of a moment he was my father again. A breath that seemed like an eternity for me and my mom. But that was only a breath to him.

(goes back to work, beat, addresses audience) He died that summer.

(beat) So here I am. Being somebody in an office tower. The windows are sparkling. But there’s no one here to see me.

Crossfade to:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.