Botte di Ferro is a new play about love, memory, class, and how communication shapes perception. In Italian, botte di ferro signifies a safe, quasi-sacred place. The play examines a fraught and complex romance between two outer-borough New Yorkers as such a space. Her (an elementary school teacher from South-Brooklyn who self-publishes children’s books and summers in the Hamptons) and Him (a chef from Eastern-Queens who climbs a long ladder of kitchen jobs to his own place) met as kids in summer camp. As their lives diverge, prodded by different cultural-familial frameworks, they continue returning to each other in search of the best versions of themselves. 

Drifting throughout into the magic of memory, the story begins and ends at Pizzeria Botte di Ferro in Naples. As Her and Him seek to make sense of their past, the Pizzaiola and Waiter who serve, then join them, celebrate their present--each couple eyeing the other enviously. This four-hander ruminates on the power of place and the relationship between origin and authenticity, asking how we care for the people who have hurt us and what happens when we set aside preconceptions and look at what’s in front of us?