‘Josie made me proud to be a wog’: Bringing Alibrandi to the stage
A stage remake of ’90s coming of age classic Looking for Alibrandi promises plenty of joyful nostalgia, but director Stephen Nicolazzo says it still has plenty to say about racism and cultural identity.
When Stephen Nicolazzo first reached out to Looking for Alibrandi author Melina Marchetta, he told her he was “a wog-boy director” who would love to adapt her book for the stage.
The confident manner in which he described himself was a far cry from his younger years, when he felt embarrassed by his ethnic background as the son of Italian migrants.
“Because I was growing up in areas that were predominantly Caucasian / Anglo-Saxon, it became really tricky to have any pride for eating strange food or, you know, growing hair in places you’re not supposed to at a certain age,” Nicolazzo says.
“I felt very much like, in order to assimilate, I had to take on a more Anglo behavioural pattern or way to present myself… that was tough.”
But reading Marchetta’s book as a teenager, and later watching the film starring Pia Miranda as Italian-Australian high school student Josie Alibrandi, he saw an Australia he understood and a character that made him “proud to be a wog”.
“Josie, her mother and her grandmother’s story was so close to my own experiences with my mother and my grandmother and my entire family that I just felt like – and I know this is the case for a lot of European migrants in Australia – that story allowed you to come forward as someone culturally different.”
The 1992 novel and 2000 film were considered ground-breaking for the way they centred the migrant experience, illuminating issues such as racism, classism and cultural identity through the story of a teenager navigating school, boys and family life in Sydney in the early ’90s.
There had never been a stage version of Looking for Alibrandi before Nicolazzo, then artistic director of Melbourne’s Little Ones Theatre, approached Marchetta, who had loosely based her novel on the story of her grandmother migrating to Australia.
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After the author agreed to his pitch, he commissioned Melbourne-based playwright Vidya Rajan to pen the adaptation, which drew large audiences across seasons at the Malthouse and Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre in 2022. Now, as director of South Australia’s Brink Productions, Nicolazzo is bringing back Looking for Alibrandi for a 12-venue national tour that will open at the Adelaide Festival Centre on May 22.
“It just feels like a really important cultural artefact in a history of cultural discrimination in Australia, and the histories of migrants and racism in the ’50, ’60s, all the way into the mid-’90s,” he tells InReview of the story.
Director Stephen Nicolazzo in rehearsals for Looking for Alibrandi. Photo: Matt Byrne / Supplied
“It’s such a significant work that’s still relevant today, because that tension and that conflict still exists for a lot of people who migrate to this country.”
The cast for the remounted production is predominantly new, but Italian-Samoan performer Chanella Macri returns as Josie, as does Lucia Mastrantone as Josie’s mother, Christina, and Jennifer Vuletic as her nonna, Katia. While the film focussed heavily on the spiky Catholic schoolgirl’s burgeoning teenage romance with a rebellious public school student, the play shifts the spotlight to these three generations of women.
“We wanted to show how each of these women are products of a very tumultuous Australia,” Nicolazzo says.
“For Nonna, it’s about the shame of infidelity, the shame of coming to a country and not knowing the language, and holding onto the past. For Christina, it’s the shame of having a child out of wedlock. And then for Josie, it’s being the bastard child of all of those transgressions and how that lingers for her and for all three of them throughout the play.”
Nicolazzo and Rajan also decided to set the play in the mid-1990s, rather than the early ’90s, so the story unfolds against the backdrop of the changed political climate ushered in by the Howard era.
"It’s one of those soul works — I made it for my family, and that’s a very vulnerable place to be when you’re making a show."
Audiences will be immersed in Italian culture, with the Alibrandi family making passata sauce live on stage as people enter the theatre. The soundtrack includes both Australian pop hits and traditional Italian music, including the theme song, Mina’s “Tintarella Di Luna”, which Nicolazzo used to dance around the house to with his mother.
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While the nostalgic element will appeal to many people, the director says Looking for Alibrandi’s playfulness and irreverence was embraced by younger audience members during its seasons in Melbourne and Sydney. He recalls sitting in a performance laughing and connecting with a woman next to him who told him he was showing her entire life story on stage.
“I always laugh really loudly because, you know, Italians,” he says. “It was this beautiful moment where I just felt like the people in the audience were rooting for the show and were present and engaged and deeply connected, and that was really special to me.
“It’s one of those soul works — I made it for my family, and that’s a very vulnerable place to be when you’re making a show, but that’s also made it so special.”
Chanella Macri takes over the role made famous by Pia Miranda. Photo: Matt Byrne / Supplied
Looking for Alibrandi is the first work of his own that Nicolazzo has presented to an Adelaide audience since taking over as artistic director at Brink in 2024 following the departure of Chris Drummond, who led the company for almost 20 years.
Nicolazzo, who divides his time between Adelaide and Melbourne, was previously co-director of Melbourne-based Western Edge arts organisation and founder of an independent company focused on queer theatre-making. He is driven to make work that speaks to a diversity of experience, and has spent the past 12 months with Brink seeding his ideas and meeting South Australian artists.
“And most of them, of course, are ethnics or queer — that’s my community, you know. I made it my quest to find all of the weirdos in Adelaide and to work with them,” he says, laughing.
His mission, he adds, was: “How do I bring a new bent to Brink?”
“But also, [it’s about] engaging with the community… how you can actually create really amazing collaborations both interstate and locally.”
Brink currently has several other works in development, including Squid, a one-person show about the experiences of a transgender man, and Someone You Know, based on one of the first AIDS memoirs in Australia.
Nicolazzo is also collaborating with writers Christos Tsiolkas and Dan Giovannoni and musical director Carla Lippis on a music-drama, Love Don’t Live Here Anymore, which celebrates the post-punk scene in the early 1980s through the story of a fictional lesbian rock band started by two working-class migrants.
“There’s a few projects that I’ve been working on that are giving me goosebumps and that I hope are getting other companies excited, so I’m hoping we will present more soon,” he says.
Presented by State Theatre Company South Australia, Brink Productions’ Looking for Alibrandi opens at the Dunstan Playhouse from May 22 – 31, before touring to Sydney, the Gold Coast, Geelong, Hobart, and regional South Australia.