Nourish your spirit, soul and funny bone with Antoinette LaVecchia in Cooking Up Comedy. In the season opening of Women Write Funny The Podcast, Host Didi Balle chows down with the Fab, Funny and Amazing Antoinette. Hear about Antoinette’s earliest memories play-acting on an apartment balcony in Italy for passersby …. her later discovery at large family gatherings where she’d act out scenes from family life imitating her mother and brother … realizing before long she had a secret super power: The Ability To Make People Laugh. Any surprise she’d grow up to receive rave reviews for her performances on Broadway and regional theaters? Plus write and star in an award-winning one-woman Off Broadway comedy “How To Be A Good Italian Daughter (In Spite of Myself)?” At the close of our interview Antoinette performs live an amazing new monologue from her upcoming play, “Village Stories,” a crazy captivating collage of characters and stories from her Italian ancestry. Spoiler Alert: Antoinette Divulges A Closely Held Family Secret: Her beloved Italian Mother's secret recipe for spaghetti/red sauce (with or without red meat for you vegans). Face it: Antoinette LaVecchia is LA BELLA COMEDIA
Credits: Host/Creator/Writer: Didi Balle. Featured Guest: Antoinette LaVecchia. Theme Music: Leslie "Doc" Steinweiss. Cover Art: Hernan Braberman. Promo Genius & Broadshouldered Angel: Larry Heidel.
https://www.womenwritefunny.com
https://antoinettelavecchia.weebly.com
https://www.didiballe.com
http://www.lesliesteinweiss.com
How We Met: Antoinette and I met at an on-line writers forum during the pandemic when the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Grad Acting Alum Writers’ Forum’s monthly workshop was moved from in-person gatherings in Manhattan to gatherings on Zoom. I met long-lost classmates and discovered Antoinette (from a later class) when she performed a monologue from her latest play. She blew me away with her talents.
Later I discovered we shared friends/theatre colleagues in common (Paul Walker) and she’d attended a performance of a musical called “Beautiful Soup” (I wrote the play and lyrics) at a theater I’d founded and ran in downtown Manhattan … a musical originally developed by and starring … Paul Walker. And the composer of that show who invited me to be his collaborator was an incredible man named Leslie Steinweiss who years later I asked to write the theme music for this podcast! Antoinette told me how much she’d loved the music/songs in Beautiful Soup before knowing Leslie composed the theme music for this podcast!
I feel weird thanking the pandemic for introducing me to this amazing funny woman whose paths had crossed with mine without my ever knowing.
And now you get to meet her too.
Didi Balle. Host & Creator. Women Write Funny Podcast. June 8, 2021