An Italian-American family struggles to be accepted in a new land. What price will it pay to achieve its American dream?
Written By John N. Frank
Directed by Giacoma Bonello
December 6-8; 13-15, 2024
125 Midwood Street, Brooklyn
The Cast
Momma…………………………………..Loretta Toscano
Del…………………………………………..Sarah Elizabeth Spagnuolo
Faye…………………………………………Giacoma Bonello
Sal……………………………………………Pasquale
Sonny……………………………………….Oliver Palmer
Stella………………………………………..Caroline Cassidy
Julianna…………………………………….Elizabeth Jarrett
Bill/ConEd guy…………………………Jeffrey Brabant
The Crew
Assistant Director & Stage Manager………………………..Hannah Lewis
The Setting
ACT I
Scene 1: The Smaldone family Dining Room, 8 p.m., New Year’s Eve, 1960
Scene 2: The Dining Room, 9:05 p.m.
Scene 3: The Dining Room, a short time later
Scene 4: Outside the Smaldone House
Scene 5: The Dining Room as midnight approaches
ACT II
Scene 1: The Dining Room, New Year’s Eve, 1961
Scene 2: The Dining Room, during the doctor’s visit
Scene 3: The Dining Room, later that evening
Scene 4: The Dining Room, approaching midnight
Please Support our sponsors
Bringing this show to Brooklyn took the help of many, many people, including our wonderful sponsors, Please support them with your patronage:
Melissa Smith is a Licensed Real Estate Salesperson with Corcoran, specializing in all aspects of residential real estate in her favorite borough of Brooklyn.
Born and raised in Park Slope, Melissa’s love for Brooklyn is a defining aspect of her character. It has kept her rooted to her community and Brownstone neighborhoods her entire life. Her pride in growing up as a New Yorker inspired her to make a career change to real estate after a highly successful, 20-plus years in Public Relations and Marketing.
1031 Events is our chair supplier. Please consider them for all your party and event rental needs, just click here.
Our thanks to Xavier High School, 30 W. 16th Street, Manhattan, which provided rehearsal space and encouragement for this production.
From the Playwright
It’s My Brooklyn, Too! is a very personal story for me, yet it’s also a story anyone in touch with their immigrant roots can quickly understand and sympathize with. It deals with an Italian-American family in 1960, a time when the country stood on the precipice of great changes that few fully foresaw. The characters in the play, the Smaldone family, also faces great changes, the type a first-born-in-America generation of any immigrant family faces, namely how do they become accepted as truly American without loosing the most important parts of their ethnic heritage?
As the play opens on New Year’s Eve 1960, family matriarch Momma is struggling to keep her family together as one adult child after another seeks to pursue new dreams and ambitions which could carry them far away from the world in which they grew up. What are they searching for and what will they sacrifice to get it? What about momma, what can she hope for from her family, how will she survive without her beloved poppa?
While the play is fictionalized, it began with the truths of my family. Faye and Sal were my parents and Sal did suffer from ulcers developed in World War II. My grandmother lived at 681 President Street in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn.
The annual New Year’s Eve party at her house was something I looked forward to all year. And one year, my youngest aunt really did bring her Irish boyfriend, seeking permission to marry him, just as in act one of our play.
I hope you will enjoy and relate to the Smaldones stories and to the overarching message of the play, namely that immigrants come to America for better lives, that quest unites us all.
From the director
When John and I connected in February 2024 this year, he propositioned me with,”I hear you do plays in brownstones.” I’d only done one play in a brownstone, and it wasn’t one that I had directed. I was, nevertheless, up for the challenge.
It’s My Brooklyn, Too! explores how a family maintains its traditions, and must also conform to a culture and period of time that demands assimilation.
The members of the Smaldone family are very similar to the members of my own Italian-American family (the Bonellos and the Lentinis). I have spent most of my life watching my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles make sense of their dual identities as Americans with Italian heritage and as native Italians. It impacts nearly every aspect of their lives and all of their relationships and it makes for comedy and melodrama, evident in this story.
Over the course of our rehearsal process, our cast has been able to find identification with our characters by sharing stories of our own families over meals we’ve been able to share. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, and we’ve navigated the obstacle of a change in venue just weeks before opening.
It’s times like these when I’m grateful to have stayed in my native Brooklyn, close enough for my parents to support me throughout this rehearsal process by loaning us their Christmas decorations and props, and running to Costco, so we have all of the food necessary for each performance.
I’m so grateful to John for writing this play. It’s My Brooklyn, Too! is a reminder to remember and honor where you come from, no matter how far away you land. If you can do that, you’ll find identification with others and build a new family along the way.
From our family to yours, thank you for joining us tonight. We wish you a very happy holiday season.
Meet the Cast
Jeffrey Brabant is an actor and writer currently based in New York City. Since graduating NYU, most recently acting in the world premiere of Cristina Masciotti’s No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh-ART/NY (dir. Rory McGregor), which was selected as a New York Times Critics Pick.
His most recent film and TV credits include guest roles on City on Fire on Apple+ (dir. Jesse Perets), Netflix’s The Punisher (dir. Alex Garcia Lopez) and ABC’s For Life (director. EIf Rivera). Jeffrey also just recently co-starred in his film All the Words on the Page (dir. Hunter Gause), which premiered at the Downtown Film Festival and the Palm Springs Shortfest where it was nominated for best US short.
Giacoma (aka Jackie; aka Gia) Bonello is an Italian-American girl from Brooklyn through and through. She’s mostly an actor who writes, directs, and produces sometimes. Thank you, John, for trusting me with this play; thank you, Joe Hoover, for connecting us; e grazie ai miei nonni per i vostri sacrifici. @justlikechia on IG.
After working behind the camera in film for the past few years Caroline Cassidy is thrilled to be appearing in The Second Act Players production of It’s My Brooklyn, Too! Most recently Caroline worked as a PSM on Gia Bonello’s directorial debut of Dreamer Examines His Pillow andas producer on a short film, Freaks, which recently made its world premiere at Raindance Film Festival in London
ELIZABETH JARRETT is so excited to be performing a play about Italian American immigrants! Select NY Theatre: The Comedy of Errors (Smith Street Stage), Processing… (Theatre East), The Happy Garden of Life (New Ohio Theatre), Twelfth Night (Shakespeare in the ‘Burg), Holy Ghosts (Theatre East), St. Vincent’s Project: Novenas for a Lost Hospital (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre). She also is the founder and a producer of Cosmic Cherry Arts Festival, a celebration of femininity, queerness, and gender expression featuring the works of dozens of femme, trans and genderqueer artists. For Pop and Dodie, and of course, for Dad. Training: M.F.A. NYU Grad Acting 2024, B.F.A. NYU Tisch.
Oliver Palmer feels incredibly blessed to be working with this incredible group of artists. Off Broadway: This Land Was Made- Vineyard Theatre, Regional: American Buffalo- Dorset Theater Festival. Film/TV: Upcoming Warner Brothers feature film, Godfather of Harlem, Power, FBI, FBI Most Wanted, Blue Bloods, Orange is the New Black, Daredevil. B.F.A. NYU Tisch Stella Adler/ Experimental Theatre Wing. Originally from Owensboro, Kentucky, Oliver Palmer is an impassioned playwright and screenwriter dedicated to sharing southern stories. More at www.olivercpalmer.com
Pasquale (Sal) appeared in Lanford Wilson’s “This is the Rill Speaking” in Sept 2024 at 350 Cornelia and earlier this year played early versions of Stanley Kowalski and Tom Wingfield in both NOLA and NYC. Other recent work includes “Cabaret” and “A Few Good Men”, Jay Gatsby in “The Great Gatsby Live Radio Play” in upstate NY and a residency with Invulnerable Nothings’ Barn Lab (2023) developing a one-person show that appeared at The Brick’s New Work Festival. Major influences include Tectonic Theater Project’s “Moment Work,” Jerzy Grotowski, David Wojnarowicz, Sam Shepard and Maria Irene Fornes.
Sarah Spagnuolo is thrilled to be working with this cast and crew to bring this beautiful family’s story to life. Off-Off Broadway: One Empire Under God- the Tank Theater, Subway Seat- Vino Theater. Regional: Heart Broker- Strong Box Theater, Last Days of Judas Iscariot- LITC, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?- Merrick Theater, Richard the Third- Eastline Theater. Sarah received her BFA from Adelphi University. Thank you to my wonderful family for all the love and support!
Loretta Toscano ( AEA / SAG-AFTRA) is thrilled to be celebrating her family heritage on and off stage. In addition to MOMMA, she recently performed the role of Nonna in “Pizza From Nowhere.” For many years she has enjoyed doing background work for film and television with featured work in the upcoming season of The Gilded Age and the Springsteen Biopic. She dedicates the work to her Mom.
As our story begins
This video will transport you back the the 1940s and 1950s at grandma’s house on President Street in Park Slope, setting the scene for the opening of our play. Enjoy and Happy New Year!
Past Productions
Italian-American playwright John N. Frank wrote the first version of the Smaldone story in 2013 as a one-act play called New Year’s Eve at Grandma’s House. It was produced in 2013 in Evanston, Il.
Frank and his wife subsequently formed the Evanston 2nd Act Players not-for-profit theater company in 2015 and in 2018, produced a two-act version of New Year’s Eve.
During the Covid years, Frank rewrote the play, working with a professional dramaturg who suggested a new title, hence It’s My Brooklyn, Too!
Below are photos from the two earlier productions. You may recognize some of the dresses from the 2018 show tonight as they were shipped to New York for this production.
2ND ACT Players 