Franco D'Alessandro (born June 15, 1967) is a New York-born playwright, poet, author, and educator. In the mid 1990s, he had eight one-act plays produced Off-Off Broadway in five years. The American playwright has had twenty-two international, Off-Broadway, and regional productions of his work and has been published or produced in eight languages over 11 countries on four continents. His Off-Broadway hit play Roman Nights explores the tumultuous lives of stage and screen legends Anna Magnani and Tennessee Williams. This play was a critical and commercial success in New York (2002) and London (2004); various productions of the play have been touring much of the world ever since, including a two-year run in South America and 15-year run in the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe. The play has been running somewhere on the globe every year for 20 years and has been nominated for and/or received various awards the world over. Early life and education D’Alessandro was born in Yonkers, New York to a nurse mother and physician father. His mother, Mary Grace, was Irish-American and his father, Francesco (Frank) D’Alessandro, was from an Italian immigrant family from southern Italy’s Basilicata (Lucania) region in the province of Matera. D’Alessandro attended Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle, New York. He attended Villanova University, studied in Siena, Italy and eventually transferred to Fordham University where he graduated with a B.A in 1989. In summer of 1990 he studied with Thierry Pathé at New York University's Filmmaking Program. In 2003, D’Alessandro received a Master’s Degree (M.A.T.) in English Education. D’Alessandro speaks fluent English, Italian, and basic Gaeilge. Career Fresh from a sold-out run of The Sweet Life at Soho Repertory Theater/Walker Space in June 2001, Time to Storm in association with HERE and Michael Kagdis' CuriousArts presented Franco D'Alessandro's Worlds Collide... at the bottom of a glass in December 2001 which celebrated sold-out run—three short plays by the award-winning playwright. This innovative evening of fresh theater featured live musical performances by Josh Joplin, a sort of Orpheus, who served as a guide through the three plays. Is That You or Is That Me? is a futuristic story dealing with the triumph of love in the face of one-upmanship and rabid consumerism. And On… is both a searing and poetic look at three generations coping with loss and love and how family influences our emotional mind-set. The evening culminates with Before and After, a