Playwright Rosemary Parrillo

(CRANFORD, NJ) -- Is the American Dream really within reach or is it just a state of mind? That's what Olivia Forte wonders in Rosemary Parrillo's Spaghetti Western, to be presented on Saturday, March 15, 2025 as part of The Theater Project's New Play Readings series at Cranford Community Center. Admission is free, with no registration required. The event begins at 2:00pm.

After the reading, members of the audience will have the chance to offer their feedback to the playwright. Mark Spina, artistic director of The Theater Project said, “Our series offers audiences the rare opportunity to perform an active role in the development of dramatic works. They, in effect, help the playwrights hone their plays before they reach the stage.”

Large-print programs and scripts are available with advance request.

Spaghetti Western explores the fragility of the American dream," says the playwright. "Olivia struggles to accept the disconnect between her father’s idealization of America’s promise and the difficult reality of what it often doesn’t deliver. In the end, she learns that we all need to make peace with who we are and where we belong."

Olivia Forte, whose last name means ‘strong’ in Italian, wrestles with this issue in Rosemary’s play. Following her father’s death, Olivia discovers she has inherited a worthless plot of land in El Paso, Texas. Her mother, Josie Manfredi, insists that she bury his ashes there. As Josie continues to slow-walk the sale of the family’s decrepit Philadelphia pizzeria, Olivia encounters physical and psychological barriers to fulfilling her father’s lifelong desire to “Go West.”

Parrillo is a New Jersey playwright and journalist. Her works, which center on people caught in the crosshairs of calamity and self-doubt, have been staged at festivals and community theaters across the country and in Canada. Her post-9/11play, The New Normal Trilogy, was selected as a 2017 semifinalist by the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center. The Nature of Stars was a 2024 finalist in the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival One-Act Contest, marking Parrillo’s fourth finalist placement in the competition.

The Friends of the Cranford Library hosts the New Play Readings series, which is made possible in part through a Union County Local Arts Grant.

Cranford Community Center is located at 220 Walnut Avenue in Cranford, New Jersey.

Fouunded in 1994 and based in Union, The Theater Project introduces New Jersey audiences to new plays and supports rising playwrights and theater artists. It develops new audiences for theater by service to the community, providing programs for children, and using theater as a forum to address current issues.