Lorenzo studied Writing for Stage and Screen at the University of Strathclyde in 2013 and has written work for himself ever since. His shows have featured at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival, MagicFest, Carlisle Fringe, Brighton Fringe, Crossroads Multicultural Festival in Pisa, and the West End Festival. His work spans the genres of Storytelling and Theatre.
Works currently touring are Loving the Enemy, a WW2 drama, and Cracked Tiles, a tragicomedy set in a Glasgow chip shop, which is based on real events.
“Powerful, honest & absolutely captivating”
“Novani’s performance is quite staggering”
“An excellent piece of theatre. Outstanding.”
Lorenzo began writing Cracked Tiles, a theatrical monologue, in 2015, several years after the death of his father, and admits that the show was initially ‘a vehicle of catharsis’. Since then Cracked Tiles has been intermittently staged around the UK and recently had a NEAT funded tour in the North of Scotland. It returns for a schedule of performances in the UK and abroad over 2024 and 2025, with a view to reaching a wider audience and a production company who will facilitate its development for TV. The play is inspired by the author's experience as a teenager, when his father’s strange behaviour led to suspicion that he may be hiding dark secrets. These episodes were framed as psychotic breakdowns, but at the time, the notion that his father was fragile, broken and out of touch with reality was an equally difficult pill to swallow. In this sense, Cracked Tiles is about the mystery of a father and the confusion of a child. It's been described as ‘Bitterly honest, powerful and moving’ (The Scotsman) but it’s not without levity: the central story is moved along with farcical comedy inspired by many of the colourful characters Lorenzo encountered during his time working in his family's real-life fish and chip shop. Cracked Tiles is a tale imbued with authenticity: both its tragedy and its comedy.
“Novani has created something special”
Loving the Enemy, on the other hand, is drama which tells the real-life story of a Glasgow-born Italian in the British Army during WW2. It is a collaboration between Lorenzo and another Scots-Italian writer, Hilda De Felice who wrote the original story based on her father's real-life experience in the British Army during WW2. Lorenzo co-wrote the stage adaptation of Loving the Enemy and is the sole actor in the performance.
“Half Scottish, half Italian, all heart”