Help Bring The Pink House to Life: An Original NYC Theater Production
Uneven cobblestones.
Faded houses with chipped paint, terraces beaming with gossip, and clotheslines.
Suspicious glances and big personalities.
Wind that smells like clean laundry and jasmine flowers.
Tradition clings tightly in Cene. Noise travels for miles.
On a hill in the mountainous valley of Northern Italy sits a pink house, in the town of Cene, Bergamo.
Spring 2021. Post COVID lockdown.
What Is The Pink House?
The Pink House, an original theater production written by Aria Martinelli and directed by Hamilton Clancy, brings audiences into the Locatelli household, a family facing memory, grief, absurdity, and love in a small northern Italian town.
The play follows adult children as they learn to live in the world without their parents for the first time and figure out how to live with each other in new ways. It asks: What does it mean to walk through a changed landscape? How do absence and presence coexist when you return to your childhood home after your parents are gone and the house is now yours?
This production honors the textures of small-town life and the emotional landscapes we carry across generations.
Themes & Vision:
The Pink House team hopes to create an environment that invites audiences into the realm of childhood nostalgia, dreams, and memory. The playwright is interested in how crises like the pandemic or the death of a family member can pull us closer to our past. To our inner child.
The piece also explores how to continue relationships with deceased loved ones. How do we remember, understand, and honor our ancestors while still living fully in the present?
The Locatellis are blunt, chaotic, and deeply human: crude, passionate, hilarious, and heartbreakingly alive. They are the kind of people who can trace one connection to the next while walking through the town cemetery. Think of storms and lightning—moody, unpredictable, and full of feeling.
This is Cene.
This is the Locatelli household.
A Sensory Experience:
The production features an original soundscape collected during visits to Cene, including church bells, cows, clinking silverware, and wind moving through stone streets.
If you’re lucky, you might even hear the nonne gossip.
Performance Details:
The Tank Theater
April 13 @ 7:00 PM
April 14 @ 7:00 PM
Why We’re Fundraising:
We are raising funds to support:
- Artists and collaborators
- Set, costumes, and props
- Lighting and sound design
- Technical equipment
- Production staff
Where Your Donation Goes:
Our goal of $3,000 will directly fund:
- Fair compensation for artists and collaborators
- Essential design and production elements
- Technical and operational expenses
How You Can Help:
Donate
No contribution is too small. Every dollar truly makes a difference.
Share
If you’re unable to donate, sharing this project will mean so much.
Attend
Join us at The Tank and experience the world of the Locatelli family!
Theater thrives on collective belief and support. Every contribution helps bring this work to life.
We hope to see you at the show!
Thank you so much,
Aria & The Pink House Team
Author’s Note
The Pink House is part of a larger, developing body of work: a series of plays chronicling life and culture in small towns around the world.
This exploration was inspired by my time spent in Cene, Bergamo, Italy; Córdoba, Spain; Hadley, Massachusetts; Huay Pakoot, Thailand; and Santa Caterina, Sicily, Italy. These places are my muses.
My visits to Cene, where my family lives, throw me into a different cadence of life and a community filled with rich personalities, beautiful souls, and wonderfully crass humor.
To me, small towns are like jewels, like family-run businesses. You meet the most interesting people: deeply passionate, idiosyncratic, and devoted to the simplest pleasures of living.
About the Venue: The Tank Theater
"Founded in 2003, The Tank champions emerging artists pursuing new ideas and forms of expression across disciplines, including theater, comedy, dance, film, music, puppetry, and storytelling. From its two-theater home on 36th Street, The Tank serves over 2,500 artists annually, presents over 1,000 performances, and welcomes more than 36,000 audience members each year. The company produces a curated season of 13-18 World or New York premieres annually."
Ticket Link: https://tickets.thetanknyc.org/EventAvailability?EventId=106601&ref=bookNow&scroll=timeAndDates
To check out more of my work you can visit my website here! Aria Martinelli Website
Welcome to a glimpse of our dreamscape
*photos by Aria Martinelli
Organizer
