“I don’t know if you’ll read this letter”

Play in Italian.

By Rita Pelusio and Domenico Ferrari With Luisa Ferroni Directed by Rita Pelusio Costumes and Set Design by Deborah Erin Parini Costume Intern: Nora Sala Lighting Design by Christoph Siegenthaler

In a shopping mall decked out for the holidays, amid artificial garlands and plastic tinsel, she works: Giovanna, a sales clerk who in December is forced to don Santa’s elf costume because the manager doesn’t have enough money to hire a real professional. No longer young, no longer naive, Giovanna is still capable of believing in that bit of magic that survives despite everything. Her job is simple: receive letters from children, read them aloud, smile, entertain. Every day she receives countless funny and over-the-top requests: talking dolls, pet dragons, whole days off from school. Letters that are comical, surreal, sometimes poetic. But one day, something different creeps in among those lighthearted voices. A “wrong” letter. Then another. Then yet another. A little girl isn’t asking for toys. She’s asking for help as best she can, and she ends her letters with that uncertain phrase. The words are confused, strange, but Giovanna, a sweet and sometimes clumsy clown, begins to sense something. The scene shifts. The play remains, but becomes a tool. Lightheartedness gives way to probing. Giovanna navigates between laughter and unease, until she uncovers the thread of a painful story of domestic abuse. First disbelief, then fear, then the decision to act. “I Don’t Know If You’ll Read This Letter” is a performance that traverses the realms of comedy and poetry without ever succumbing to rhetoric; it is a suspended testimony. Through the character of Giovanna, forced to wear a costume too big for her role, the show transforms a seemingly mundane and consumerist setting—the Christmas shopping mall—into a stage for hidden truths and fragile hopes.“I Don’t Know If You’ll Read This Letter” is a theatrical act of responsibility, an ode to listening and courage, dedicated to all those girls and boys who write letters that no one reads, and calls out the adults who must take responsibility for listening and acting so that these horrors are never repeated.