People grow up in families, in neighborhoods, taking in, by osmosis, culture, habits, attitudes. And then, unsurprisingly, adulthood happens with new cultures, habits, attitudes.<\/p>\n
The inevitable reckoning fuels \u201cGemini,\u201d part of an EgoPo season focused on Philadelphia playwrights. Innaurato was just 25 when he wrote the play about Francis Geminiani, a quietly queer Harvard student celebrating his 21st birthday in South Philly, circa 1973.<\/p>\n
It \u201ccertainly feels like a complex love story to the home, all the beautiful parts and all the ugly parts,\u201d said director Dane Eissler,<\/a> who grew up in similar circumstances in Franklinville, New Jersey, which he describes as a similarly gritty town 25 miles south of the Ben Franklin Bridge.<\/p>\n \u201cThose feelings of home are so conflicting,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do we grow up into the person we want to be without being trapped by who we could have been?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGemini\u201d runs Feb. 4-15 at Theatre Exile,<\/a> appropriately located in the heart of South Philadelphia at 13th and Reed streets. In New York, \u201cGemini\u201d became one of the longest-running non-musicals on Broadway, opening on May 21, 1977, and closing Sept. 6, 1981, after 1,819 performances.<\/p>\n The play\u2019s main character \u201cwas an Ivy League student and from South Philly,\u201d Eissler said. \u201cThose two themes can seem like two different worlds, but in reality, we all carry the same hopes and dreams and pains. How can we look past those differences and see each other as people who need people?\u201d<\/p>\n Eissler describes Innaurato\u2019s play as a \u201cbackyard comedy,\u201d meaning the laughs are generated by a motley collection of characters at Geminiani\u2019s backyard birthday party.<\/p>\n On stage are Geminiani\u2019s divorced father and his new girlfriend, plus neighbor Bunny \u2014 think Melissa Schemmenti from \u201cAbbott Elementary\u201d \u2014 with an \u201cuncle\u201d in every business. Also in attendance are Bunny\u2019s overweight son, Herschel, and a brother-and-sister pair of WASPish siblings from Harvard.<\/p>\n Eissler, who lives in South Philadelphia, said the play has made him appreciate his neighborhood, its peculiar accent, its ballsy \u201caddytude\u201d and, of course, the food. As the cast assembled for rehearsals, they made it a point to sample Italian foods from the neighborhood. A favorite? Fiadone, a Corsican cheesecake made from sheep milk cheese.<\/p>\n But what really struck home for Eissler, he says, is a gentle understanding of family \u2014 his own family in particular. It\u2019s a feeling he says he hopes transfers to the audience, as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis show is reframing \u2014 making me appreciate all the times I\u2019ve been frustrated with family and family is being frustrated with me. It\u2019s hard work to hold a community and give each other a kind of familial support. I\u2019m appreciating all the hard work and lifting up we\u2019ve done for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n Eissler says he salutes EgoPo for focusing on Philadelphia playwrights in its \u201cAmerican Voice \u2013 250 years of Philadelphia Playwrights\u201d season.<\/p>\n \u201cGemini\u201d arrives on stage just as several Philadelphia theaters have collaborated to co-market a series of plays by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames, who lived in Philadelphia until last year.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Philly has a pretty great playwright scene,\u201d Eissler said, pointing to programs such as PlayPenn and InterAct Theatre Co. \u201cThere is a lot of fostering of playwrights in the community. I think Philly does have really good lineage of raising bold new playwrights.<\/p>\n \u201cPhilly also has a great new play scene,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got your playwrights, but then you have all the devisers,\u201d the people creating new works, including solo clown and burlesque performers, \u201cstemming from that Philly Fringe culture.\u201d<\/p>\n EgoPo\u2019s fall production was \u201cWaiting for Lefty,\u201d by Philadelphia playwright Clifford Odets<\/a>.\u00a0 EgoPo also staged readings of works by playwrights Thomas Godfrey<\/a>,\u00a0 a Philly playwright born in 1736 (\u201cPrince of Partha,\u201d 1767), Robert Montgomery Bird<\/a>, who is buried in Philadelphia\u2019s Laurel Hill Cemetery (\u201cGladiator,\u201d 1831), and George Edward Kelly<\/a>,\u00a0 Princess Grace Kelly\u2019s uncle and another Philly Pulitzer Prize winner for drama (\u201cShow Off,\u201d 1924).<\/p>\n Coming up May 7 is \u201cLiving Legacy,\u201d a reading of works by Sonia Sanchez<\/a>, a playwright and the city\u2019s former poet laureate, and Natyna Bean,<\/a> a PlayPenn member, created in 1982 and 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n FYI<\/p>\n \u201cGemini,\u201d Feb. 4-15, EgoPo Classic Theater,<\/a> at Theatre Exile,<\/a> 1340 S. 13th St., Phila. Tickets<\/a> available via EgoPo\u2019s website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You got a problem with this? The birthday boy does. He\u2019s back from Harvard enduring a South Philly…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":558962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,648,244252,1448,2830,7260,1311,101681,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-558961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-egopo","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-performing-arts","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-south-philly","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115996267084289737","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Francis-Judith-Randy-talking-in-huddle-Gemini-Rehearsals-03.jpg\")
Tommy Sullivan-Lovett as Francis, Eliza Waterman as Judith, and Kohl Pilgrim as Randy, rehearsing for EgoPo\u2019s upcoming production of \u201cGemini.\u201d (Devon Roberts -Wanderin\u2019Eye Photography)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fran-bunny-laughing-gemini-rehearsals-at-egopo-01.jpg\")
Johnny Fernandez as Fran and Melanie Julian as Bunny rehearsing for \u201cGemini.\u201d (Devon Roberts -Wanderin\u2019Eye Photographty)<\/p>\n