it's fine

Written by Gianfranco Lentini

Reading on Thursday, March 21, 2024

Performed by STAND Performing Arts

It’s the night before Thanksgiving and 27-year-old Salvatore (Sal) has just returned to his family home in suburban Pennsylvania to his increasingly more conservative immigrant mother and a 97-year-old grandfather, whose has only sunk deeper into dementia. Three generations of an Italian family who all speak a different tongue. Sal doesn’t recognize them just as much as they struggle to recognize him. As the situation deteriorates into aggression, Sal finds the courage to deliver his final good-bye. But before Sal can leave, his mother has the final word.

Gianfranco Lentini is a NYC-based queer playwright, teacher, journalist, and First Generation Italian American. Artistically, Gianfranco’s work has been developed and produced by Torrent Theatre, UNDER St. Marks Theatre, A Night of Play, Theatrical Response Team, Burlington County Footlighters, The Magnetic Theatre, and the inspiraTO Festival (Canada's largest short play festival). His work has been published by The Coachella Review, Mini Plays Review: An International Journal of Short Plays, and Molecule Literary Magazine. Gianfranco has worked on Broadway as a production assistant for a number of shows, including Disney's Frozen; Hello, Dolly!; and Springsteen on Broadway. Off-Broadway, he has been the associate director on many developmental shows with companies including Nederlander Worldwide, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and York Theatre Company. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor at New York University for Tisch Drama’s New Studio on Broadway, teaching story

& Musicals. He is also a Wendy Wasserstein Project Representative for TDF (Theatre

Development Fund).

Journalistically, Gianfranco has written for Time Out, Grindr, LGBTQ Nation, Backstage,

Broadway’s Best Shows, Broadway Spin, Samuel French, TheatreMania, and NYTheatre. He now preserves and archives queer stories as a researcher for the Fire Island Pines Historical Society. And previously, Gianfranco was a Content Producer for the LGBTQ+ historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Dr. Eric Cervini (@EricCervini), as well as the Editorial Manager for Dr. Cervini's independent queer bookshop, ShopQueer.co (@ShopQueer.co). Gianfranco is a proud Member of the Dramatists Guild of America. You can learn more about him and his work at heygianfranco.com and on Instagram at @HeyGianfranco.