Play examines issues of identity

OLGA LIVSHIN

Every nation has episodes in its history people would like to forget, yet they are often the episodes that should be remembered. To address the lack of knowledge about one such almost-forgotten affair, the Italian Cultural Centre in Vancouver is shining the spotlight on the fate of Italian immigrants during the Second World War, when 44 members of the Circolo Giulio Giordani club were interned without charges and hundreds of others were declared enemy aliens and forced to report to the police every month, Italian businesses were boycotted and Italian schools were closed. The ICC’s current project, A Question of Loyalty, includes an exhibition at the centre, the book Injustice Served by local historian Ray Culos and Fresco, a play by Lucia Frangione.

The events in Frangione’s play fluctuate between today and the war. One of her characters is Alessandro, a Jewish barber, an Italian immigrant and a Mussolini supporter. The relationship between Alessandro and his Italian neighbors and friends reflects the reality of the time when Italians and Jews lived side by side in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighborhood, where they shared houses and friends, jobs and poverty.

Alessandro is a philosopher searching for the meaning of life, and rebels against his heritage. The most conflicted and interesting character in the play, Alessandro admires Mussolini in the beginning of the story. He keeps Il Duce’s bust on his mantel, joins the fascist party (as some prominent Jews in Italy did at the time). Then, comes the shocking announcement: following Hitler’s decree, Mussolini issues the antisemitic Manifesto della Razza (the Manifesto of Race). Enraged and hurt, Alessandro smashes his bust of Mussolini, a symbol of his past. His disillusionment is complete when, as a fascist sympathizer, he is arrested by the RCMP and sent to an internment camp, together with more than 600 other Italians across Canada.

The play not only delves into the lives of Italians in Canada during the war, it examines the loss of hope in wartime, generational dynamics, the hardships of immigration and the bitterness of the language barrier. Alessandro, a man in the process of a painful transition, knows what he was, but doesn’t know what he is to become. At one point, he asks in sad puzzlement, “Am I an Italian? Am I a Canadian? Am I a Jew?”

As a man who thinks outside the box, Alessandro resonates with his creator, a playwright and an actress, an Italian and a Canadian. In an interview with the Independent, Frangione said that it took her seven months to research and write Fresco.

“In Italian, the word fresco has multiple meanings,” she explained. “It means ‘out in the cold’ or ‘shunned from society’ but it also means ‘renewed’ or ‘fresh.’” Frangione incorporated its multiple meanings into her tale.

Her research produced some unexpected results. “History surprised me,” she said. “I learned how much my people have accomplished since they came to Canada. During the war, they were shunned, struggling. Now, Italian often means popular: food, fashion, art.”

She admitted that it wasn’t easy for her to dig for the facts: “All the men who were interned or declared enemy aliens are dead by now, sadly. Many of their surviving relatives didn’t want to talk about it. The memories are painful. There’s still some stigma attached.... Those men, they were not a blip in history. They had families, wives, children. Those events affected all of them.”

Besides the central issue of the play, it also analyzes the overlap of cultures: Italian and Jewish. “Jewish presence in Italy goes back as far as Judah Maccabee, 161 BC[E],” Frangione said. “Some early Jewish members of the fascist party in Italy were Aldo Finzi and Guiseppe Volpi. Finzi was a fighter pilot and one of the nine Jewish deputies elected to the parliament for Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. Volpi was Italy’s finance minister and one of the founders of the Venice International Film Festival. It all ended when Mussolini adopted Hitler’s policy towards Jews.”

Like many Italians, Frangione said she is horrified when she considers the oppression and murder of Jews in Italy, which followed Mussolini’s manifesto, and her dismay is one of the reasons she made Alessandro Jewish. Another reason was purely artistic: it made a good, complex story.

“I felt strongly about the material in this play,” she said. “I deal with racism in many of my plays but, in this case, I was doubtful at first. I thought, is it my place to tell this story, to touch on the Jewish theme? But it felt wrong to leave it out. The play is not about Alessandro being Jewish. It’s about him being a man, a human being. It’s a human tragedy, but there is humor there, too. I didn’t want it to be a dry historical drama. And BellaLuna actors captured the spirit of my play wonderfully.”

Produced by BellaLuna Theatre and directed by James Fagan Tait, Fresco runs March 21-24 at the Shadbolt Centre (shadboltcentre.com) and March 28-31 at the Cultch (thecultch.com).

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

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