THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY TO PRESENT "SIX PASSIONATE WOMEN" BY MARIO FRATTI, DIRECTED BY STEPHAN MORROW.
A great film maker has been stealing ideas all his life. Six passionate women decide that to be a muse is to be exploited. They enact a bizarre revenge. This comedy was the prototype for the musical "Nine."

Dennis Parlato stars as the film maker - a character inspired by Fellini.
October 9 to 26, 2014 - Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave.
Presented by Theater for the New City
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 PM, Sundays at 3:00 PM
$12 general admission, $10 seniors and students. Box office (212) 254-1109, www.theaterforthenewcity.net

NEW YORK -- Nino, an Italian film maker with a strong resemblance to Federico Fellini, is in an artistic crisis. Every new work is, for him, an artistic crisis. So he goes to bed with a multitude of women, seeking ideas and stimulation, feeding on them both humanly and artistically. Nino is sexually impotent until he gets a good idea, and then he's hellfire. But his sexual partners, all artists in their own right, are not satisfied. Rallied by a wealthy feminist American widow, they decide that to be a muse is to be exploited. So they exact revenge by making a movie of Nino's life and fantasies, Candid Camera-Style. Thus unfolds "Six Passionate Women" by Mario Fratti, a play inspired by the playwright's personal acquaintance with Fellini, whom he covered closely as a journalist in the late 1950s. It combines a serious disquisition on the creative mind with recurring themes of Fratti's plays: betrayal, jealousy and sexual politics. Theater for the New City will present the piece October 9 to 26, directed by Stephan Morrow. Dennis Parlato, as the film maker, heads a cast of eight that is peppered with Broadway vets.

It became an adaptation of the film "8½"--that evolved into the Broadway musical, "Nine," a winner of sevenTony awards and eight Drama Desk awards. An interview is reproduced at http://www.jsnyc.com/season/birth_of_nine.htm in which Mario Fratti recalls the birth of "Nine" and how adding the film "Casanova" to "8½" convinced the producer to produce that Tony-sweeping musical.