LETTERE D’AMORE (Letters of Love)
Written by Dacia Maraini, performed and directed by Francesca Fanti
NOV 16 thru DEC 15 | SAT 8 PM & SUN 5 PM
The Marsh – 1062 Valencia St, San Francisco
Lettere D’Amore (Letters of Love) presents a fictional theatrical monologue by one of the most prolific and known Italian writers and feminist activist Dacia Maraini. In the play, Mara, played by Francesca Fanti, reads through love letters from the famed Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio known for his sensual language of another time, rich with extraordinary sounds. The letters, found among her mother’s possessions after her death, cause the daughter to rethink her idea of her mom and the relationship they had.
FRANESCA FANTI
Award winning actress Francesca Fanti presented the bold one-woman comedy show “Orgasmo Adulto Escapes From the Zoo,” (written by Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo and Franca Rame) with which she won the ADA Artistic Director Achievement Award for Best Actress in Comedy in Los Angeles and The Bay Area Critics Award for Best Solo Performance in San Francisco where the show was critically acclaimed, sold out and extended for months.
Francesca was chosen by Francis Ford Coppola to play the leading role of Filomena Corrado in Distant Vision, a live cinema experimental production (and possible future full-length feature film) directed by Coppola as a month-long project at UCLA.
She can be seen in the FX TV show “American Crime Story – The Assassination of Gianni Versace” (episode #8) in the role of Franca Versace, mom of Gianni. Also in Bryan Singer’s critically acclaimed digital web series “H+” in the leading role of Simona Rossi and in Nine opposite Daniel Day Lewis.
A versatile actor, Fanti has provided voice work for many projects including “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” (2012), the Oscar nominated Disney-Pixar success Luca (2021) and the Oscar winning Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022).
Milestone Italian writer Dacia Maraini invited Francesca to perform her work in Italy after seeing Francesca’s sterling performance of Maraini’s drama one-woman show “Letters of Love” at the Italian Institute of Culture in Los Angeles. Francesca later on brought Maraini’s controversial play “Dialogue Between a Prostitute and Her Client” to critically acclaimed performances in Pasadena and she has written a film adaptation of this play. She is also developing two other projects: “Dating Valentina” (a comedy about divorce, single parenting and online dating debut) and “Missing Milo H.” (a drama inspired by the true story of a friend who recently went missing.