Campaign image for the 2022 Season of 'Looking For Alibrandi'. In Photo: Chanella Macri. Photographer: Kristian Gehradte
Looking For Alibrandi
By Vidya Rajan
09 July 2022 – 31 July 2022 Merlyn Theatre
Malthouse Theatre, Belvoir,
Theatre Adaptation Co-Production Season 2022
The beloved Australian classic novel and groundbreaking film comes to the mainstage for the first time.
Josie Alibrandi is in her final year of high school. Whip-smart and aspirational, she is a third-generation Italian teenager and scholarship kid, with the shadow of a family curse and a penchant for rulebreaking. Juggling grades, boys, and the claustrophobia of an overbearing nonna and saintly mother, Josie’s life becomes tangled in the webs of class, identity, and family history as she finds her place in a changing world.
Iconic novel and cult movie, Looking for Alibrandi is the honest and empowered portrait of 1990s Mediterranean culture that spoke for the first time about systemic racism in Australia from a migrant perspective. It defined a generation and to this day resonates with those caught in the stranglehold of identity and othering in this country. Director Stephen Nicolazzo (Loaded, Merciless Gods) brings Melina Marchetta’s best-selling novel to the mainstage for the first time, where Vidya Rajan’s adaptation will join three generations of women in a passionate, heart wrenching, and unmissable rendering of the Australian classic.
Starring Chanella Macri (Australian Realness), Lucia Mastrantone, and Jennifer Vuletic (Because The Night) as the Alibrandi women with Ashley Lyons, Hannah Monson, and John Marc Desengano (The Lockdown Monologues).
★★★★½
“BURSTS TO RADIANT LIFE ON STAGE IN THIS JOYOUS SUNBEAM OF A PRODUCTION”
— ArtsHub
"The story has always compelled me because it spoke so directly to the conflict I experienced, socially and internally. I was scared to embrace my identity for fear of not being able to access an Anglo-centric world. Josie was the first character I had ever read or seen on screen that understood what it was like. She made me proud to be a wog and I will thank Melina for creating her every single day."
— Stephen Nicolazzo, Director, Looking For Alibrandi
Cast
Creatives
Writer
Director
Set & Costume Designer
Composer & Sound Designer
Lighting Designer
Choreographer
Casting Director
Stage Manager
Assistant Stage Manager
Acknowledgements
Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir present Looking for Alibrandi. Malthouse is supported by COVID-19 Arts Sustainability Fund - an Australian Government initiative.
Production Program
Keep exploring