Taran­tel­la, 2016

Taran­tel­la is a full length play writ­ten and direct­ed by Eliz­a­beth Bowe. It pre­mierd in Sep­tem­ber 2016 at the Clapham Omnibus The­atre in Lon­don. Orig­i­nal music was com­posed for the pro­duc­tion. A smat­ter­ing of Ital­ian and Sicil­ian dialect is spo­ken through­out.

The play is set in 1941 in a ten­e­ment in Lit­tle Italy, New York and the sto­ry is based around three gen­er­a­tions of an immi­grant fam­i­ly who orig­i­nate from Sici­ly. The fam­i­ly run a suc­cess­ful butch­ers and they are also musi­cal: the men­folk play gui­tar and sing and the women dance. Ten­sions build amongst the fam­i­ly mem­bers as the younger gen­er­a­tion yearn for the free­dom of the soci­ety they were born into whilst the old­er gen­er­a­tion hold onto their past. The threat from the local mafia and the unfold­ing of war in Europe pro­vides the ele­ment of dan­ger against which these domes­tic issues are played out.