Midge Guerrera

Even as he revels in the surprising kindness of his captors, Giovanni Nardelli, an Italian Prisoner of War interned in WWII America, wrestles with guilt over his family's peril in their war-torn Southern Italian village and is own “life of Riley.”
Connections are lost between Giovanni Nardelli, a World War II Italian Prisoner of War, housed in a New Jersey depot, working as a member of an Italian Service Unit and Annalaura, his Italian resistance member wife. Giovanni wrestles with his life as an officer organizing his men to load armaments onto trains heading to blast the Italian front and the life of Annalaura in the caves and hills of Campania surviving bombs and aiding the allies.

PUBLISHED BY NEXT STAGE PRESS
During and after one of the most horrific tragedies our nation has ever faced, our keyboards kept us connected. E-Mail: 9/12 demonstrates how sharing, caring, grieving and even allowing a spark of humor to fly through cyberspace helped our nation get through the painful aftermath of 9/11.
From her train window on September 11, 2001 Margaret witnessed the shocking destruction of the World Trade Center in New York. Wending her way home and unable to sleep, Margaret sits down at her computer and sends an e-mail to all of the important people in her life. Since the horror began she has been unable to contact her husband. Like thousands of others, she needs to know that the rest of the people she cares about are safe. After a restless night Margaret returns to the computer and is shocked to see the number of responses she has received. The avalanche of e-mails keeps coming.
These responses provide a picture that probes into the hearts of the people that were there, had someone there and those of us who will always be able to tell you where we were when the first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 AM.

Mamma Mia - La Befana?! weaves the ancient Italian Epiphany tale of La Befana, into a contemporary American story. Mary’s father is trapped in the Sudan. She rides her Christmas bicycle off to find a senator’s office and appeal for help. There is an accident. For centuries on Epiphany, La Befana has found and visited all Italian children. Could the fun loving sixty-something Nonna from Florida really be the thousands of years old Italian La Befana? The answer becomes evident as Nonna/Befana uses her magic to find her lost and injured granddaughter, Mary. Like the Magi, Mary's three friends aided by La Befana find Mary hunkered down in the church manger and the resources to get her father home.

What’s a not quite over the hill aged educated woman to do when there is no one else around to pull the cows in from a raging flooded river and fight the political home front fights? Hook up with her best friends for life and activate the fem-militia. Flagtown Fem-Militia, old friends sharing cocktails, stories and problems for decades, was a happy hour joke, until it was not. The weekly cocktail and conversations night turned into a loosely formalized political action group. The United States’ call to arms forcibly brings all men and women under the age of sixty-five - except the rich and well connected - to fight for something or another around the globe. As wars rage elsewhere, the haves and the have nots at home wage a war of their own.
Together, the Flagtown Fem-Militia, six women in their third and fourth acts, face the dangers of the times, endure the tragedies that strike their children abroad, and get angry at a system that rewards the well-connected and forgets those that have been maintaining communities for generations.
This female collection of one nonagenarian, four over sixty-something mamas and one 4-F twenty-something with laughter, pot, wine and balls of steel strive to ensure that the world their loved ones left to protect will look the same when and if they come home.

Published by NEXT STAGE PRESS
Wanda, lives on a hilltop with her family and a herd of goats. She is incredibly lonely but none of the kids in the valley are interested in being her friend. It is Halloween, the day witches dance in the forest, and the perfect time for Wanda to trick the children in the valley into being her buddies. Ooops, that was a big mistake. Wanda cries Witch one to many times and inadvertently conjures up, Matilda, a really frightening witch. Follow Wanda on her journey to find playmates. Along the way, she learns that feeling special, being happy with who she is, enjoying where she lives and always telling the truth is the best way to find and keep friends.

PUBLISHED BY YouthPLAYS
An old woman struggles down a long and dusty trail to buy un-bruised bananas for her spoiled granddaughter. Great Eagle, feeling pity for the woman, repairs her damaged legs and magically creates a bucolic village for her full of the people in her life who love her. But soon after, a thunderous storm in the new village becomes the harbinger of the old woman’s overindulged progeny. Will this cantankerous child literally bite the claw that feeds them?

PUBLISHED BY NEXT STAGE PRESS
In story theatre fashion, the play brings the fables of the Eastern Woodland Indians to life. Stories range from the creation of the world, the clans, European Explorers to ritual. Many Snows Ago is based on the extremely short tales of the Lenape and other Eastern Woodland People. The dramatization and embellishment of these tales was done to engage today’s young audience while still imparting the wisdom of this noble group of people.

Interspersing her today and many yesterdays, the play, Annarita, takes us on a poignant journey through one Sicilian woman’s American experience. The play demonstrates the true grit of an Italian immigrant. The principal character, Annarita, turns an active ninety and her past flashes before her. As a bright child she had been forced to leave school and work in the Pennsylvania coal mines. Later, to pay off her father’s debt she was forced to marry a man as old as her father. She defends herself against her husband’s drunken rage and starts life on her own. Bitterness infects the children and family that try to love her. Today, forced to live with her drunken youngest son, she still demonstrates that nothing can dim her inner strength and bravado. Nothing will take away her will or her humor.