Francesca Fanti’s
Lettere D’Amore (Letters of Love)
In Person at The Marsh San Francisco Mainstage
Performer: Francesca Fanti
Playwright: Dacia Maraini
Director: Francesca Fanti
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Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance,
and additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
November 16 – December 15, 2024
Saturdays at 8pm | Sundays at 5pm
Ticket Information
Tickets: $20 – $35 General Seating sliding scale | $50 & $100 Reserved Seating
Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance,
and additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
80 minutes | No Intermission | Ages 15+
Please do not bring infants to the show
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About the Show
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.
Artist Biography
FRANCESCA FANTI – Award winning actress Francesca Fanti presented the bold one-woman comedy show “Orgasmo Adulto Escapes From the Zoo” at The Marsh (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.
In Italy, Francesca also worked with American character actor Vincent Schiavelli, presenting the show “Cc’era ‘Na Vota” in Sicilian dialect (not her own) to audiences in Sicily. She also starred in the very popular Italian TV show “La Squadra” and worked with director Carlo Carlei on the TV movie “Ferrari”.
Francesca has also worked on numerous national commercials with such celebrities as Herb Ritts, Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna and Bob Richardson.
DACIA MARAINI – Maraini’s work focuses on women’s issues, and she has written numerous plays and novels. She has won awards for her work, including the Formentor Prize for L’età del malessere (1963); the Premio Fregene for Isolina (1985); the Premio Campiello and Book of the Year Award for La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (1990); and the Premio Strega for Buio (1999). In 2013, Irish Braschi’s biographical documentary I Was Born Travelling told the story of her life, focusing in particular on her imprisonment in a concentration camp in Japan during World War II and the journeys she made around the world with her partner Alberto Moravia and close friends Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas.
Much of Maraini’s writing was affected by her parents and the roles they played in her life. Maraini grew up with an adventurous father and a mother who was always burdened and, in addition to this, read books in which only men would go on quests and journeys. She states that she “became upset by the fact that no great journey could be taken by a woman…
In 1966, Maraini, Moravia and Enzo Siciliano founded the del Porcospino (“Porcupine”) theatrical company which had as its mission the production of new Italian plays. They included her own La famiglia normale, Moravia’s L’intervista, Siciliano’s Tazza, and works by Carlo Emilio Gadda, Goffredo Parise, J. Rodolfo Wilcock and Tornabuoni. In 1971 he signed the Open letter to L’Espresso on the Pinelli case against the police officer Luigi Calabresi. In 1973, she helped to found the Teatro della Maddalena which was run by women only.
Many reoccurring themes evident in Maraini’s work are: personal freedom for women,[9] exposing the use and abuse of power and its effects on women,[10] women breaking free of traditional gender roles to explore their sexuality and social activism,[11] the silencing of women in society and their appearance in the fashion-system,[12] the seclusion and isolation of women as a result of women seeking their independence and freedom,[3] motherhood as a form of confinement for women and more.
Although Maraini states she is a feminist only in the fact that she is always on the side of women, much of Maraini’s work has been classified as feminist.