We recently connected with Vincent Marano and have shared our conversation below.

Vincent, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I always wrote and when I was young I directed and performed without ever taking a class. It wasn’t I earned my Masters in Playwriting and Directing, when a world of creative possibilities was opened to me, did I find my voice and tell the stories always present in my heart. To be a creative, you need to open to experience and not be the sole interpreter of events. Your characters need to speak for themselves. If I hadn’t become an career educator, I might have had earlier success. To be independent and successful commercially, you need to sell yourself and what you do, you need to make networking as important as creating a new work. Few will see the new work, if you can’t sell the old work. All that said, students have taught me how differently stories can be told, how realities are flexible given personal and psychological contexts. You need to have patience, with your characters, your stories and not let your pride, your love of your words, images, characters, get in the way of the story you want to tell. Time and ambition are threats to learning. Patience and openness are essential.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have been working in New York theater since the 1990s, in community and Off-Off Broadway prodctions as an actor, director, producer and dramaturg. Since I am fluent in Italian, I have translated works by Machivelli and Dario Fo and directed Italian language productions. I have advised numerous artists on one-person shows since the early 2000s, helping them shape their stories and staging them. I am a produced playwright with a broad understanding of theatrical styles, from naturalism to expressionism, from agit-prop to performance art. My strength is my ability to write in many genres, from commedia dell’arte to urban dramas, from epics about the failure of systems to personal two-handers about the arc of a relationship. A winner of the BRIO award (Bronx Recognizes it’s Own) for playwriting, a number of my plays, notably Confirmation (FringeNYC 2009) and The Yard (BRIO winner, 2023) are set in the Bronx. Inspired by August Wilson, I am currently working on seven play cycle that charts Italian American experience in the Bronx from WWII to 9/11. I am interested in how we, as humans, create personal myths to manage public and social trauma.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I have been working on the tale of a Jewish gangster who returns to the Bronx after a long prison sentence. He tries to rebuild his relationship with his daughter and become a good person, but falls backs to his old ways. Initially, I thought this was going to be film noir type of story; violent, ugly and tragic. I felt that people who do evil are always just one step away from reverting to their old selves, one disappointment. Working with an older Jewish woman who produced a number of my plays at the National Arts Club and elsewhere, the play has become a redemption story. How returning to one’s roots, confronting trauma and denial of trauma, can bring peace to a volatile soul. I ceded a certain level of autonomy of my work and trusted her instincts in a way I never did before. I, who always was the advisor and collaborator, had listen to another, whose take on my work was decidedly different. The play has greatly changed in small and big ways and I learned, over the course of six years that characters make claims on you that you have to recognize and explore.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I strive to talk about important themes and ideas in miniature. That the journey of one family in the Bronx is emblematic of all migrants who try to a find home and identity in the absence of hope. That people in the midst of tragedy are not victims only, that good people can do horrible things and awful people can have moments of grace. My play Lights Narrow was nominated for multiple NYIT awards and is the shortest full length I have written so far (75 minutes), yet it resonated with a lot people. It is a work about what happens after you die, perhaps, and explores whether judgements and forgiveness end with our last breath. What gets us into paradise, good deeds, good intentions? Is salvation something we strive for or is it given to us no matter what? I find great theater is both comedy and tragedy at the same time. Another lauded play, A Collapse, confounded some audience members because, as a human tragedy was unfolding, regular people did and said funny and vulgar things; audiences didn’t know when to laugh or cry. That is my mission, to engage audiences and artists in a conversation about why art is essential; it forces us to laugh, cry, be outraged and act.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vincentmarano.com
• Instagram: vincentmarano2
• Facebook: Vincent Marano
• Linkedin: Vincent Marano
• Twitter: VmaranoP