A WORLD PREMIERE PRODUCTION
by John Anthony Loffredo
directed by Zi Alikhan
L is a stoner with social anxiety, Harold is an aspiring ballerina, and their mother is a woman from another time. Driven by archaic dreams for her children, all Mamma wants is for a man to marry L to rescue the family from financial ruin. So when a big, burly traveler turns up at their doorstep, she thinks her prayers have been answered. But it is Harold, her tutu-wearing son, who seems most attracted to this strange man, while L, her chronically online “daughter,” doesn’t seem to want him – but wants to become him. By turns raucous, poetic, touching, and dangerous, Frou-Frou: A Menagerie of Sorts riffs on Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie in this story of two queer siblings yearning to be understood.
John Anthony Loffredo is thrilled to be making his professional playwriting debut with the world premiere of Frou-Frou: A Menagerie of Sorts at Boston Court Pasadena. He has previously developed work as a member of Under Construction at the Road Theatre, Boston Court Pasadena’s Playwrights Group, and Clusterf**k at the Coop NYC. John Anthony is a former O’Neill semi-finalist, Lambda Literary fellow, and recipient of the Nancy Garden Scholarship. Their work as an essayist has been published in them and is shared regularly on their Substack, late to the party. John Anthony is also a two-time AIDS/LifeCycle rider, cycling from San Francisco to Los Angeles with thousands of others to raise awareness and millions of dollars to support community members living with HIV/AIDS. Education: BFA in Drama, NYU Tisch.