Mickey & Joe: Good. Bad. Ugly. Dirty is having its world premiere in Montreal from May 17 to 25, 2025. Playwright and actor Michaela Di Cesare’s latest work reframes the story of Italian unification through the eyes of the silenced. In this interview for Accenti, Michaela reflects on legacy, resistance and rewriting the past.
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Let’s start with the obvious – Michaela Di Cesara is playing the role of Michelina Di Cesare. When you discovered that you are, in fact, a direct descendant of this brigantessa who opposed Garibaldi’s mission to unite Italy, what was the next step in your thought process? When did you realize it needed to become a play?
I am both proud and ashamed of this moment. After my play Successions, the new artistic director at Centaur Theater, Eda Holmes, asked me: “If you could come and be the playwright in residence next year, what would you write about?” I swear this idea had never occurred to me before and for some reason, out of my mouth comes: “I want to write a spaghetti Western about the unification of Italy.”
Would you have ever imagined that the world premiere of Mickey & Joe would take place during a time in Canada’s history when we are suddenly and collectively trying to make sense of concepts like “annexation”?
No. I started writing a play about a woman who opposed the creation of Italy, who had deep ties to her homeland and wanted to protect it, and who was eventually silenced and killed for those beliefs and for that fight. I could never have imagined what is happening in the world right now. I could never have imagined that we would be talking about how easy it might be for someone to waltz into your country and take part of it. It feels like a very dangerous time. Now standing up on stage and speaking these words feels so much more contemporary.
I was lucky enough to see an excerpt of the play in 2023 at AccentiFest in Calabria. Can you speak about how that experience shaped the play’s production?
AccentiFest brought me together with Director Daniele Bertolini who then introduced me to actor Matteo Cremon. There was really this miraculous chemistry, with Matteo stepping naturally into the role of Joe, the play’s version of Giuseppe Garibaldi. The experience in Calabria really concretized our creative collaboration. The three of us knew that it was something we wanted to deepen. Trying out play on the audience that was there and answering the question: is there anything here? I have thought to myself, does anybody care about the unification of Italy? And the role that Michelina Di Cesare played in it? The audience’s reaction and investment was very surprising to me and made the experience so much more profound. It validated for me that there is a public for this. It resonated with people in so many different ways. I remember audience members being so emotional. It was very hot that day and I couldn’t tell if it was sweat or tears! That was the gift of AccentiFest.
The play’s director, Daniele Bartolini, has said that you “unearthed a story that reverses the narrative around the Unification of Italy.” What reactions are you hoping to spark in audiences, both Italian and beyond?
I am truly hoping that all the social and political issues going on globally right now means that the play will resonate with the general public. I have been asked before whether I will continue to write about Italian subjects and I hope that people see that I take something that is very specific and personal to me, but that it speaks to a larger context. Actually, what makes it universal is how specific it is to me…because I can access something authentic that can then communicate and reach something authentic in other people. I am truly hoping that the play serves as a call to action. Within the Italian community, I hope that there is some coming together…some unification. I think that as a diaspora and within communities, we still experience a certain fragmentation that comes from our history. I hope that this can be a unifying experience for the community.
The line “You Were Nobody” from Joe hits hard. How does the play explore the idea of who gets remembered and who gets erased in history?
The play addresses the question of who is entitled to a legacy. Who is called a hero and who is called a criminal? And worse than that, someone who becomes a hero and then gets forgotten. How is that decided? And is this happening today? Whose names do we hear over and over again? Who is not even granted humanity or personhood in the coverage of all the tragedies that we are witnessing globally. A thread in all my writing is about saying someone’s name and giving them their moment in a way that is documented and official. Including their name in history is already a step toward remembering.
The play involves immersive elements and video projections, so the audience isn’t just watching passively. What kind of experience can audiences expect?
Knowing Daniele, he will suggest a fieldtrip! He really is an artist who is very focused on keeping the audience engaged, with implicating them and keeping them active throughout a performance. So, I think that the audience can expect some fun and a little bit of trouble. And that question of “what do you do when you are witnessing injustice.” Do you sit there and watch? I think ultimately, that is going to be the question of the piece.
Your performance schedule includes a post-show panel discussion on May 24, 2025 with Italian Studies professor Cristina Carnemolla and public historian Cassandra Marsillo moderated by the CBC’s Sabrina Marandola. Why was this an important element to include?
There was so much research that went into presenting the complex historical background of Italy’s unification. I wanted to put all of it into the play, but it was heavy and it was a lot. A play can’t be a history lesson. It must ultimately be dramatic. It has to have characters who have goals and who take actions to achieve those goals. They can’t really stop and lecture the audience. We had so many conversations about where does all the content that we cut from the piece go? Where would it live? We thought of different ways to bring that forward, including as an exhibit or a museum piece. There is so much that is fascinating about Italian unification that I wanted the audience to be able to access a companion piece to the show. We landed on having a panel of experts. It’s important to me that everyone know that ticket holders for any performance in the run will be able to attend the panel discussion on the 24th of May. They can come and listen to a talk about the historical background of Italian unification – both the official history and the counter-narrative of the people in the South. And I am sure we will only scratch the surface. Hopefully this is a conversation that will continue.
If the brigantessa Michelina Di Cesare could see this production, what do you think she’d say?
She would probably say that I am talking too much! She was a woman of action. I don’t think she spent a lot of time doing monologues when she was trying to survive in the woods, when she gave birth in the woods and when she was fighting for her life in the mountains. One of my self-critiques is that I am a thinker and not a doer. Am I achieving change with my work? Is there a better way? Michelina would probably ask, why are you speaking so much and why are you speaking English?! But jokes aside, I would hope that she would be gladdened and reassured that we are still talking about her. Because she lost. She was on the losing side of things. There are villages in Southern Italy that continue to recreate her final battle and her death. There is a folksong about her and people sing it. I hope that this play can enter that cannon where if Michelina could know that this is happening, that she would at least feel like it wasn’t in vain, that the South has maintained a certain independence in her honour. And that there is still this spirit of resistance.
You are not only the playwright but also performing one of the two title roles. Is this typical?
I never learn. It’s a little typical of me, for better or for worse. I have been cautioned many times in my career not to do this, from very well-intentioned mentors. The idea behind it, certainly in anglo-Canadian theatre, is to protect the new play and to make sure that the writer is only focused on the writing by being on the outside observing. I’ve played roles I wrote for myself a few times. Perhaps in the past it was or wasn’t the right decision. It’s hard to look back now. But with this particular role of my ancestor Michelina, it felt absurd not to play it.
What’s one thing you hope people carry with them after they leave the theatre?
I love when I leave my audience with questions that they need to answer instead of handing them the answers. I hope that they ask themselves about legacy and about who gets remembered in history. I hope that they ask themselves what can I do when I witness injustice, in the moment…as opposed to waiting for history to ultimately decide that what happened in the past was wrong. Because I think that that kind of passive waiting just leads to the same things happening again and again. And as always, I hope that men have a good long think about the women in their lives. That is something recurring in my work.
What’s next for Dirty Mickey after this run? Or is she ready to rest?
Michelina has a real vendetta to settle on Italian soil. What’s next is what was supposed to happen after showcasing the excerpt at AccentiFest in 2023: an Italian tour of the show, taking Garibaldi’s route, starting in Sicily and working our way up. After Calabria, we had several theater companies who were interested in the show, but I learned I was pregnant shortly after the arrangements were made and the Italian tour was put on hold. We need to bring Michelina back to her land that she loved so much and to perform it on that land. That would be a truly magical full circle.
Mickey and Joe: Good. Bad. Ugly. Dirty opens on May 17, 2025 at the Mirella and Lino Saputo Theatre in the Leonardo Da Vinci Centre in Montreal. Click here for tickets.
Anna Romano Milne is a writer and community cultural leader. She lives in Ottawa.