Successions

By Michaela Di Cesare and Tamara Brown

After the unexpected death of their parents, two second-generation Italian Canadian brothers must come together to decide whether to hold on to the family home, which is full of secrets and hoarded junk, or save what’s left of their strained relationship.

When Anthony, an uptight lawyer running for office, arrives with his former actor-turned-campaign-manager wife Cristina, they’re set on signing away the house and everything that comes with it. But Enzo, a disorganized plumber, and his pregnant girlfriend Nat have other plans. The pleasantries quickly turn to tense deliberations that unearth dramatically differing views of the group’s past experiences and present values.

This clever family dramedy takes a close look at issues that affect modern second-generation immigrant families in Canada—class differences, antiquated old-world beliefs, and a crumbling Canadian dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Mar 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780369103468

Michaela Di Cesare

Michaela Di Cesare is a playwright and performer with an M.A. in drama from the University of Toronto. Her solo show, 8 Ways My Mother Was Conceived was presented across Canada and in New York City. Next came In Search of Mrs. Pirandello at Centaur Theatre’s 2016 Wildside Festival, followed by the main stage world premiere of Successions in the 2017/2018 season. Extra/Beautiful/U won first place in the 2017 Write-on-Q competition presented by Infinithéâtre. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) premiered with Geordie Productions in September 2019 (Outstanding New Text Nomination, METAs 2020). Michaela was playwright-in-residence at Centaur Theatre in 2019/2020, writing Terroni or Once Upon a Time in the South. She is currently working on two new plays, Hot Blooded Foreigner for Tableau D’hôte Theatre and Oppression Remedy, the sequel to Successions.

Book preview

Cover: Successions by Michaela Di Cesare. An illustration of two white hands holding a blue house. There are an assortment of objects piled in front of the house and spilling out of the hands. Objects include an arm chair, shelves, chairs, a lamp, garbage bags, wine bottles, books, a painting of woman, and a figuring of the statue of liberty. Papers are falling away. In the background is a green silhouette of Montreal.

Successions

Michaela Di Cesare

Playwrights Canada Press

Toronto

Successions © Copyright 2022 by Michaela Di Cesare

First edition: March 2022

Jacket design by Angelina Doherty

Author photo © Julian Stamboulieh

Playwrights Canada Press

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416.703.0013 | [e-mail] | www.playwrightscanada.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a license from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact:

Ian Arnold at Catalyst TCM

15 Old Primrose Lane, Toronto, ON M5A 4T1

416-568-8673 | [e-mail]

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Successions / by Michaela Di Cesare.

Names: Di Cesare, Michaela, author.

Description: A play.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210393424 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210393440

| ISBN 9780369103444 (softcover) | ISBN 9780369103451 (PDF)

| ISBN 9780369103468 (HTML)

Classification: LCC PS8607.I2125 S83 2022 | DDC C812/.6—dc23

Playwrights Canada Press operates on land which is the ancestral home of the Anishinaabe Nations (Ojibwe / Chippewa, Odawa, Potawatomi, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Nipissing, and Mississauga), the Wendat, and the members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora), as well as Metis and Inuit peoples. It always was and always will be Indigenous land.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.

Logo: Canada Council for the Arts.Logo: Government of Canada.Logo: Ontario Creates.Logo: Ontario Arts Council.

For Gab, who hoisted me up on his shoulders so I could reach the best spots for my Montreal Fringe posters twelve years ago, and who continues to lift me up every day.

Foreword

by Tamara Brown

A curious phenomenon exists in stories in that the more specific in detail and perspective they are, the more universal they feel; what we may believe to be our most singular and private experiences are often the very ones that unite and resonate within us all. To me there is nothing more universally human than a story—they reflect the other back to ourselves and can act as a conduit for learning and connection in the way they speak to who we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going, and even to who we hope to become. A story can be the shortest distance between people; it’s difficult to hate and fear the other once we recognize their story within ourselves. We may be singular, but we are not alone.

It’s understood that a homogenous Canadian experience or identity doesn’t exist, and yet it can be argued that most of what is considered Canadian cultural canon disseminated on our stages, screens, and in literature is often confined to a depiction of humanity that reinforces the image and primacy of the Canadian colonial identity. As a director, I am most attracted to stories that feature the complex humanity and diversity of the lived experiences of marginalized people or communities who do not typically see themselves represented beyond the tropes and stereotypes that are associated with them in society. There is a particular music that has emerged as a result of the lived experiences and culture specific to my neighbours from the Italian diaspora in Montreal. Its refrains are hauntingly familiar to any other community who has also come to participate in the Canadian colonial project, depending on their perceived proximity (or not) to whiteness and respectability politics.

The significance of Michaela Di Cesare’s voice as a playwright is about so much more than being a trailblazer of representation for her community, it’s also in the point of view she brings to her storytelling: an unabashed, feminist gaze that is as compassionate as it is unflinchingly honest and irreverent in its regard, tinged with a dark sense of humour that is an act of resistance, provocation, and release, but also one of hope.

Throughout the workshop and up until the time of production, my imagination was captured by the play’s larger questions of cultural/societal and ancestral/familial legacies in all their forms: the ways in which they impact the events of our lives, the stories we tell about ourselves, and of the belief systems and behaviours we inherit occupying as much space in our lives as a house crammed full of physical possessions. Three years after its world premiere in Montreal, the simple, inevitable, and difficult truths about grieving found in Successions are particularly resonant during a global pandemic—the messiness of change that it provokes, the tug of war between hope and despair, the flashes of clarity or questioning that arise, and how the bonds that tether us to the world around us are either forged or broken as a result. I’ve certainly come to a far more intimate understanding of what it is to grieve the death of a parent and to sort through a lifetime of personal belongings far sooner than I ever expected or wanted. In the story of Anthony and Enzo Di Ciccio, Cristina Tommaso, and Nat Trimonti, I am struck anew how life continues inexorably alongside death without any pause or consideration of the space and time needed for grief to become manageable, of how little time and space the brothers have in which to unpack a