Albert Repicci’s works include the Off Broadway play Honor Bound, the one-act plays The Haberdasher, Once Upon a Rose, Holding Hands At Midnight, and two award-nominated plays, Injustice For All and A Play on Words. Published short stories include Sarah and the Red Scarf, Bringing Satch Home and Nantucket Musings. As a correspondent for The Greenwich Times, Repicci reported on the genocide trials in Cambodia, the earthquakes in Nepal, and the Nazi war crimes trials of Auschwitz. Mr. Repicci practiced orthodontics in Greenwich, CT for 40 years and worked as a volunteer with foreign medical mission groups performing oral surgery in third world countries since 1981. Although the mission focus was primarily related to health care, additional projects were initiated such as installing water wells, livestock farms, fluoride and immunization programs and providing shelter. The projects serviced remote populations in the jungles of Rwanda and along the Amazon in Peru, the isolated villages in the Himalayas, the plains of Mongolia and the bush in Cambodia, the Philippines and southern Africa as well as in hill country of Central America. His new play A Play On Words, will be presented at the 30th Annual Strawberry One Act Festival which takes place July 13th through July 30th at Theatre at St. Clements in NYC. For tickets and information log on to TheRiantTheatre.com
How did you get involved in theatre? When did you know that you wanted to be a writer?
My brother’s singular career was producing live theater for the New York stage and I subsequently became involved as an associate producer. There was little satisfaction to be had in that capacity and I very much wanted to be on the creative end of the whole theatrical process. Although I had done a considerable amount of writing in the form of essays, op-ed articles, short stories, etc., I had never written for the stage. I was drawn by the notion that, as a writer, one enters the theatrical creative process at the very beginning with every pulse in the story being a product of your own imagination. So, I began reading everything I could find on writing for the stage. I hired a dramaturge, attended writing workshops, participated in readings and eventually finished my first full length play.
Tell me about A Play On Words. What compelled you to write the play? How do you feel rehearsals are going? What do you love most about the show?
A play I had written, Injustice for All, was in the finals of a short play competition and I was startled that much of the dialogue in the other plays projected an abundance of gratuitous expletives and sexually explicit language. I shared my observation with a colleague who chuckled agreeably and said, “You ought to write a little play about it”. A Play On Words is the brainchild of that challenge. The rehearsals are inspiring. The characters are cerebral, funny and masters in their own worlds and our gifted actors and director bring a plethora of creative nuance to the stage. I love when an actor delivers a line with such creativity and panache that I have to refer to the script to see if I had actually written that line.
What kind of writing inspires you?
Any writing that makes me think, laugh or cry inspires me. What doesn’t inspire me is the convenient use of excessive expletives as the alternative to well-crafted emotional and descriptive dialogue.
Who or what has been the biggest influence on your work as a writer this far?
Edward Albee, for showing in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? that a visceral, gut-wrenching play with bile oozing out onto the stage could still be written through the mastery of the English language rather than succumbing to convenient expletives.
Ken Wolf, Artistic Director of the Manhattan Repertory Theatre, for providing a venue and support system for the many new plays that have been produced under his guidance. We are fortunate to have been a finalist in two of the MRT competitions.
Joshua David Frank, my long time dramaturge, who has been merciless in his editing, yet supportive in his advice.
What else are you working on right now?
I am presently completing a play about two wooden soldiers carved from the same tree, but who are destined to be cast into desperate worlds where good and evil are on a collision course.