Duecentomila, livre ebook

• kai was inspired by going through their own transition and journey in connecting with their Italian family.
• First produced as a reading by Ergo Arts Theatre in Toronto, March 2019.

HANNA enters.

KAT
(To HANNA) S​eriously?

HANNA

Hey.

KAT
Why can’t you be chronically late like everybody else.

HANNA
I got bored. Santiago was talking my ear off again. He carved Laura’s name into one of his pencils.

KAT
Ewwwww. How do you know that?

HANNA
Cuz I borrowed it from him in chem today. The little metal bit was all chewed up, too, and the wood had started to erode. Probably from his saliva.

KAT
EWWWWW! What a psycho.

They laugh together. A pause. HANNA notices ELI.

HANNA
Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize you were on FaceTime –

KAT
It’s cool. This is my cousin, Eli. Our dads are brothers.

ELI waves, awkward. HANNA waves back.

HANNA
Are you in – ?

KAT
He’s the one I told you about, yeah.

ELI
... Florence.

HANNA
Wow. ​Florence.

ELI

It’s really not so impressive. If you were here you would see.

HANNA

But ​Italy...

ELI
If you were here ...

KAT
He’s the one I told you about. The transgender one.

A beat.

KAT
He’s like the bravest person I know.

ELI
I’m really not ...

KAT
No, seriously. Don’t be humble. I think about what my dad went through with our grandpa? Getting kicked out, moving to a different country... I know I know I know, it was the seventies, things are different now, but like. He wasn’t even trans. Just a cis gay dude.

HANNA
(To ELI) T​hat must be really difficult.

ELI shrugs.

KAT
I keep telling him he needs to come visit! For Pride!

ELI
Maybe, if it wasn’t so expensive ...

KAT
Next year! For Pride! That’s lots of time to save up money, buy a ticket really early, you can get like HUGE discounts if you buy early enough –

HANNA
Have you ever been to Canada?

ELI
Never. No.

HANNA
You’re not missing out on much anyway. I mean, you live in ​Italy...

KAT
Don’t tell him that! He’s not gonna come if you / tell him ​that –

HANNA
I’ve only ever visited once – I was still pretty young though, just a little kid, really. We did Venice, Florence, and Rome, but not Milan. Venice was my favourite. All those waterways. We went on a ride in one of those long boats, what are they called...

ELI

Gondolas.

KAT exits.

HANNA
Yeah! It was September – I remember, cuz I started school late that year and I had all

these assignments and things I had to catch up on when we got home, I was so stressed – but not at the time. At the time, it was perfect. Paradise. Not too hot... twenty-five, twenty-six degrees, every day, day after day. All those little archways, and the opera house, and the statues of winged lions and... so, you’re really not missing much. Toronto, we have snow. And the CN tower. I suppose if you tried really hard, squinted your eyes, you could pretend Lake Ontario was the ocean. But it doesn’t smell the same.

ELI
Like hot garbage.

HANNA laughs.

HANNA
Some days, sure – Wednesdays, that’s garbage day in the Annex, where we live – but not ​all ​of / Toronto

ELI
No, Venice. That’s what it smells like, now. Like garbage, left to rot out in the sun. It’s a ghost city, all year, until the summer. And then the tourists come. But this is a real problem. Most of the year, there’s no one there. No one to look after the city as it sinks. It’s a real problem. Everyone is gone.

Beat. KAT re-enters.

KAT
Heyyy, sorry to abandon you so quickly, but since ​someone ​doesn’t understand the concept of being fashionably late, I should probably run. We’ll talk soon though, yeah?

ELI
That would be nice.

HANNA
Great to meet you!

ELI
You, too.

KAT
CIAO CIAOOO!

KAT blows kisses at ELI, ends their video call.

ELI opens up a trapdoor in the floor and takes out a number of white candles.

He sings quietly to himself while he lights a few of the candles and places them along the lip of the stage.