Franco D'Alessandro

Franco D'Alessandro (born June 15, 1967) is a New York-born playwright, poet, author, and educator.

He attended Villanova University, studied in Siena, Italy and eventually transferred to Fordham University where he graduated with a B.A in 1989.

In the mid 1990s, he had eight one-act plays produced Off-Off Broadway in five years.

The American playwright has had twenty-two international, Off-Broadway, and regional productions of his work and has been published or produced in eight languages over 11 countries on four continents.

His Off-Broadway hit play Roman Nights explores the tumultuous lives of stage and screen legends Anna Magnani and Tennessee Williams.

In summer of 1990 he studied with Thierry Pathé at New York University's Filmmaking Program.

Fresh from a sold-out run of The Sweet Life at Soho Repertory Theater/Walker Space in June 2001, Time to Storm in association with HERE and Michael Kagdis' CuriousArts presented Franco D'Alessandro's Worlds Collide... at the bottom of a glass in December 2001 which celebrated sold-out run—three short plays by the award-winning playwright.

This innovative evening of fresh theater featured live musical performances by Josh Joplin, a sort of Orpheus, who served as a guide through the three plays.

Is That You or Is That Me? is a futuristic story dealing with the triumph of love in the face of one-upmanship and rabid consumerism.

And On… is both a searing and poetic look at three generations coping with loss and love and how family influences our emotional mind-set.

The evening culminates with Before and After, a double play, which has contemporaneous stories unfolding.

The production ran from Wednesday December 19 through Sunday December 23, 2001 at the HERE Arts Center - the Dorothy Williams Theater.

This play was a critical and commercial success in New York (2002) and London (2004); various productions of the play have been touring much of the world ever since, including a two-year run in South America and 15-year run in the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe.

The play has been running somewhere on the globe every year for 20 years and has been nominated for and/or received various awards the world over.

More recently, he has made local headlines in Westchester County, where, according to reports, in his role as a teacher, he was engaged in inappropriate communications with his students (minors) outside of the classroom.

D’Alessandro was born in Yonkers, New York to a nurse mother and physician father.

His mother, Mary Grace, was Irish-American and his father, Francesco (Frank) D’Alessandro, was from an Italian immigrant family from southern Italy’s Basilicata (Lucania) region in the province of Matera.

D’Alessandro attended Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle, New York.

In 2002, his two character play about Tennessee Williams and Anna Magnani, titled Roman Nights, premiered Off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square, Manhattan, produced by Suzanne Corso.

The New York premiere production received respectable critical and commercial success for the writer.

In 2003, D’Alessandro received a Master’s Degree (M.A.T.) in English Education.

D’Alessandro speaks fluent English, Italian, and basic Gaeilge.

This three-act play went on to be produced in London in 2004 and again in Prague in 2006, where it has since been on a six-year sold-out tour of Eastern Europe.

In 2004, D’Alessandro’s AIDS drama, The Shattering, was workshopped at the Cherry Lane Theatre with Olympia Dukakis and Christina Zorich.

In June 2009, Finishing Line Press published D'Alessandro's first collection of poetry entitled Supplications: Immediate Poems of Loss and Love (ISBN 1-59924-474-8).

This first small collection of poems was endorsed by the Italian American Writers Association and was nominated for a PEN New England Award.

A newly completed play, White Elephants Dancing The Flamenco, was inspired by an Ernest Hemingway short story.

It is alternately scathing political satire and drama, which examines life before and after the September 11th attacks.

The production was dedicated to a TTS founding member, actor Kevin Cleary, who was killed on 9/11.

The evening's plays were directed by Jared Coseglia, Michael French, and Eva Minemar and presented by TTS Artistic Director John-Dylan Howard.

In 2011, the play opened in Buenos Aires as Noches Romanas under the direction of Oscar Barney Finn; that year it was also performed in France, Italy, and Spain as part of various international Tennessee Williams centenary celebrations.

In 2011, the playwright created an alternate, shorter production version of that play entitled Tenn & Anna.

In November 2011, Eva Minemar directed Italian actress Lidia Vitale in Solo Anna, a new one-woman play D'Alessandro wrote which draws from his years of researching and writing about Anna Magnani; it played again to sold-out crowds in Los Angeles and Rome in 2012 under the direction of Minemar.

It arrived on the New York stage in 2012 and has been touring since 2013.

The play received two major theater awards, the Premio Anna Magnani and the Enriquez Award for Excellence in Theater.

In 2015, D’Alessandro’s new play, Dancing Barefoot in the Dark was a Eugene O'Neill Theater Center New Play semi-finalist.

The play is part of a trilogy that looks at the late 20th century Irish-American experience based on the author’s own experiences.

Over the years, there have been no less than three attempts to make a feature film of Roman Nights, one with Peter Bogdanovich attached as director.

As of 2022, the film script is currently in development for a second time with Rose Pictures, Ltd.

His career as a high school teacher at the Bronxville School was going well, until it turned sour when, according to reports, he was engaged in inappropriate communications with minors (his students), causing him to be placed on home assignment.