The Evanston 2nd Act Players will be holding a table read Sept. 22, Sunday, with a New York cast and director for its founder John N. Frank’s original play It’s My Brooklyn Too! Veteran New York actor and director Giacoma Bonello has been hired to direct and act in the show.
The invitation-only reading is the first step on the road to a hoped-for December production of the play in Brooklyn, where it is set. The 2nd Act Players have reached out to several Brooklyn real estate professionals in search of a Brooklyn brownstone in which to stage the play, which takes place in a Brooklyn brownstone in 1960 and 1961.
“I want audiences to feel they are at the play’s New Year’s Eve party at my grandmother’s house on President Street when they come to this show,” says Frank. “Renting a traditional theater space wouldn’t have the same vibe as a classic brownstone with a large living room connected to a large dining room.”
The play is the latest incarnation of Frank’s play New Year’s Eve at Grandma’s House which the 2nd Act Players have produced twice in Evanston, as a one-act play in 2013 and as a two-act play in 2018.
“This is my family’s story, but it’s also the story of every immigrant family that’s come to America,” says Frank “It deals with their struggles to achieve the American dream, looking at what families must sacrifice along that road. We’re working with an Italian-American director who is herself the daughter of immigrants and so deeply understands and feels what this play is about.”
Bringing this play to New York “is without a doubt the most difficult thing we’ve ever done,” says Frank of the 11-year-old 2nd Act Players. “Covid knocked us off our growth path and our first attempt to come back from it was a disaster. So this is a make-it or break-it moment for us,” says Frank. “It’s time to go all-in with our remaining resources and bring this story to where it began, the streets of Brooklyn.”
When a venue is found, plans call for showcase performances to take place the first two weekends in December.
The play will be the second that the 2nd Act Players have done in New York. In 2019, the theater brought Frank’s play The Institute, about his years in a Catholic military school at the height of the Vietnam War, to his high school, Xavier, for a weekend of staged readings.
Xavier this year is generously providing space for the reading of It’s My Brooklyn Too! and for rehearsals in October and November. “Xavier has always been a magical place in my life, a place that was the first to encourage me to be creative and a place I could always depend on. I’m hoping the Xavier magic rubs off on this show just as it did in 2019 when we played to standing-room-only crowds there,” says Frank.