the hit one woman show
written and performed by Aja Nisenson
YOU’LL LAUGH. YOU’LL CRY. YOU’LL CRAVE PROSCIUTTO AND RED WINE.
Aja Nisenson takes her audience on a hysterical and provocative ride through the underbelly of Bologna’s jazz scene. Playing herself and the eight Italian men she encounters, twenty-one year old Aja comes of age as she pursues her dream of becoming a jazz singer with the help of more than a few eager Italian men.
About The Show:
Piccola Cosi, which in Italian means “small like this,” is based on Aja’s experience singing jazz in nightclubs and restaurants in Bologna, Italy. The show traces her development as a woman and a jazz singer, and is a sprawling cacophony of Italian culture and Aja’s own fractured understanding of it, where pizzas walk across tables and men appear as smoke in doorways.
“As full of talent as she is of spaghetti, she recalls in vivid, sidesplitting detail her trip through Italy as a 21-year-old virgin who becomes a sought-after jazz singer… Nisenson is a natural storyteller, with an ear for impersonations and an eye for glamorous and gritty detail.”
–BACKSTAGE
“I saw this show [Piccola Cosi] twice… After that first time, I cried—not immediately, but in the street. I cried over risk, over sexuality, over danger as success and safety as failure, over being a woman and an artist. Isn’t that what theatre does at its best—cut you to the core?”
