Duecentomila
- Publisher
- Playwrights Canada Press
- Initial publish date
- Nov 2022
- Subjects
- Gay & Lesbian, Canadian
- Categories
- LGBTQ2S characters
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WCAG level AA
Single logical reading order
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EPUB Accessibility Specification 1.0 AA
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Accessibility summary:
A simple book with the cover, author, and logo images described. This book contains various accessibility features such as a table of contents, page list, landmarks, correct reading order, structural navigation, and semantic structure. A number of blank pages in the print equivalent book have been removed resulting in some pages not appearing in this digital EPUB. This publication conforms to WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
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eBook
- ISBN
- 9780369103833
- Publish Date
- Nov 2022
- List Price
- $13.99
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Description
Estranged teenage cousins Eli and Kat have recently met online and bonded over their queer identities, but they have a limited understanding of each other’s very different realities. In Italy, soft-spoken Eli is trying to find a way to come out as trans to his conservative Roman Catholic family. In Canada, strong-headed Kat is desperate for connection to a culture and place she’s never known.
Kat and her friend Hannah are the only ones who know that Eli is trans—not even his brother Matteo knows. And while her intentions are good, Kat’s decision to crowdfund a flight for Eli to attend Toronto Pride unknowingly outs him to the public, setting off a chain of events that leave the cousins and their loved ones reeling.
Full of poetry, laughter, and big questions, this touching story paints a portrait of what it’s like for young people wanting to reconcile what they’ve inherited with what feels right.
About the authors
kai fig taddei (they/them or no pronouns) is a queer and trans writer, editor, and law student, born and raised on the unceded and unsurrendered territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples. kai wrote this play early in their second puberty, which probably explains all the teenage angst.
Paula Wing is a playwright, translator, and teacher. Plays in progress include Vox Lumina, a story centred around medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and The Cabin, a play about land and history in cottage country. Paula’s adaptation of Josh Funk’s picture book How to Code a Sandcastle premiered at Thousand
Islands Playhouse in 2021. Her most recent translation is Home by Mireille Tawfik for Montreal’s Imago Theatre. Paula teaches youth in partnership with many organizations including the Gryphon Trio’s Listen Up program, Kick Start Arts, Young People’s Theatre, and Soulpepper Theatre. She’s a sessional professor at the University of Windsor, and the creative writing instructor at the Native Men’s Residence in Toronto. Paula is also a sought-after dramaturge, currently working with, among others, Sarena Parmar on Hunger, at Tarragon Theatre, and on Pawâgan (a Cree adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth) by Reneltta Arluk for the Stratford Festival.
Awards
- Short-listed, Lambda Literary Award for Drama
- Short-listed, Lambda Literary Awards
Excerpt: Duecentomila (by (author) kai fig taddei; foreword by Paula Wing)
HANNA enters.
KAT
(To HANNA) Seriously?
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) That 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.