Interview by Liliana Maria Isella.
Broadway rising star Kailin Brown on going from being a precocious theater arts student in Burlington, Canada, to becoming the iconic Velma Kelly on the 2023/2024 USA National Tour of Chicago the Musical – all this shortly after changing her pronoun from She/Her to They/Them and right before turning twenty-three years old!
Interview by Liliana Maria Isella.
Poesia di Liliana Maria Isella.
Un giorno mi innamoreró di qualcuno
E ti spediró le sue ceneri
Nel biondo di palazzi
Abbandonati dal vento
Fra sorrisi di strade
Che inciamperó per imitare
Un giorno mi innamoreró di qualcuno
E riceverai le sue ceneri
Fra ciglia sedotte
Arruffate da smorfie
Verso un angolo di mare
Che affanneró per inondare
Un giorno mi innamoreró di qualcuno
E benedirai le sue ceneri
Davanti a un prato di stelle
Fiorito fra intervalli di fumo
Sotto un cielo in crescendo
Che rallenteremo, per poter ritornare.
Poesia di Liliana Maria Isella.
Photo: Patrycja Planik.
Interview by Kiana Madani.
Actress, writer and activist Kiana Madani interviews Liliana Maria Isella, author of the 2020 novel Love Letters, available on Amazon.
Love Letters is a deliciously haunting Hollywood tale of love, fame and fortune unfolding through the amusing, disturbing, rock ’n’ roll letters that Virginia, an American girl in her early twenties, sends to a movie star with whom she is obsessed. Each letter gradually discloses both Virginia’s suffocating and horrifying childhood and her craving for fairytales present in Los Angeles that will deliver its first disillusionment right through that not-so-much next-door-sweetheart John movie star with whom she has entrusted all of her dreams of love.
In a fearless resilience to trade a past of damnation with a future of shiny headlines, Virginia’s intense encounters and unpredictable twists will dance her from a squalor of junkies, drug dealers, and young prostitutes to a deluxe suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel first and, eventually, to an unprecedented world of superstardom. Amongst her journey’s lucky charms, remarkable will be the characters of The Lady in Gucci, a self-centered Italian supermodel on the constant verge of a nervous breakdown and her best friend Susy, an overly romantic, at times delusional and talented-at-heart novelist that Hollywood is now trying to turn into an unremarkable screenwriter.
Love Letters is an unique and original look into the dark side of family, our addiction to the media, Hollywood’s boulevards of broken dreams and the pre-set formula of happiness that upheaves from their ashes. Of that Hollywood, our protagonist Virginia is a sacrificial victim at first but only to turn, by the end, into the very essence of its success: unpredictable are the ways to achieve it and bizarre the penchants destiny awards it through.
Interview by Kiana Madani.
LILA 