Lust, Lies and Marriage is a world premiere directed by the internationally acclaimed master of Italian comedy, Antonio Fava.

Dottore tells his daughter she'll be marrying Lelio when all she wants to do is marry the handsome Orazio. A foreign woman named Celia falls in love with the same Orazio while another gentleman named Odoardo falls in love with her. What's a servant or two to do but dress up in disguise and help lovestruck masters figure the whole mess out? Add an enchanted well, a wily thief, a voluptuous innkeeper and greedy fathers, and you've got a classic setup for an Italian farce, Commedia dell'Arte style!

The script, found in 1896 among 176 other scenarios in Casamarciano in the province of Naples, Italy, had been lost for over two centuries. It then languished in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Naples for another century. Italian scholars endeavored to study and transcribe the text. The English translation has only been available in the past few years. They represent the most important discovery in Commedia dell’Arte history.

This production will be presented on a traditional Commedia platform and costumed in the style of the engravings by Jacques Callot, from the period of the Casamarciano scenarios.

Maestro Antonio Fava, one of the world’s foremost scholars, performers and directors of this art form, will direct the production; he will also compose the music and design and construct the signature leather masks. Maestro Fava is the Director of the International School of the Comic Actor in Italy and author of two definitive texts on Commedia, The Comic Mask in Commedia dell’Arte and Actor, Training, Improvisation and the Poetics of Survival (Northwestern University Press).