Where is Here? is the first volume of two anthologies that are the result of a proposal call issued by CBC Radio’s Sunday Showcase for plays dealing with an immigration theme. The first six plays are: Raj Kumari’s Lullaby, by Rishma Dunlop, a play set in British Columbia and Quebec’s Eastern Townships that charts a Punjabi-Canadian woman’s coming of age; Crossing Gibraltar by Ehab Lotayef, a fascinating look at the life a man has lived by immigrating to Montreal, and the life he might have lived had he remained in Egypt; Wanderers, by Marco Micone and translated by Sheila Fischman, traces a teenage boy’s visit to his ancestral village in Italy where his questions arouse disturbing memories and questions for his grandfather; Joy Geen (See You Again), by John Ng, in which a Canadian family must decide whether or not to risk sheltering their Chinese God-sister who has entered the country illegally; Entry Denied by Sugith Varughese is a period drama about the attempt to prevent 376 Indian immigrants aboard the Komagata Maru from landing in Vancouver, 1914; and, Couscous, by Guillaume Vigneault and translated by Jon Van Burek, explores the decisions a single mother must make when engaging in a new relationship with her daughter’s soccer coach.

Toronto’s Damiano Pietropaolo is an award winning writer/broadcaster, director, translator, and educator. Translations include: selections from Italian Renaissance drama and dramatic theory (Sources of Dramatic Theory, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 1991); Ugo Betti’s The Queen and the Rebels (Pro Arte Productions, Toronto, 1997); The Fellini Radio Plays, translated and adapted for the stage from radio plays by Federico Fellini (Stratford Festival 2002); a play Love Letters from the Empty Bed, adapted from Ovid’s Heroides, (staged at the Glenn Morris Studio Theatre and the Canadian Opera Company’s Bradshaw Amphitheatre, 2012); and the novel Between Rothko and Three Windows: Murder at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Quattro books, 2016). Essays, reviews and creative non-fiction have appeared in Saturday Night Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Grail Magazine, CBC Radio, and Il Quotidiano della Calabria. As editor, director and producer Damiano explored the theme of exile and return and the emergence of a post-national drama in such series as Where is Here? The Drama of Immigration (Scirocco Books, 2005), Little Italies (2006, CBC Audio Books, 2007). Essays, poetry and short fiction have been translated into Italian and published in A Filo Doppio, Ed. By Francesco Loriggio and Vito Teti, Donzelli, Rome 2017.

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