Award-winning actress and playwright, Antoinette LaVecchia, was born in southern Italy and emigrated to the Unites States with her parents when she was still a young girl. After receiving her B.A. in English Literature from Cornell University, she pursued her MFA at NYU's Tisch Graduate Acting Program. While there, she was sent to study Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theater. After graduation Antoinette was awarded a Fox Fellowship and chose to study with the world-renowned Clown/Bouffon teacher, Philippe Gaulier at the theatre company, Complicité, in London. She also received the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust Grant to help further her development as a writer and performer. Antoinette is fluent in Italian also speaks Spanish conversationally.
On screen, Antoinette plays the recurring role of “Lucia Francavella” in the reboot of the much loved sitcom, Mad About You, currently streaming on Amazon Prime She has appeared in guest-starring roles in such films as Deliver Us From Evil, Lost Cat Corona, Delirious, The David Dance, Jesus’ Son, and TV shows including Bull, The Deuce, FBI, Blindspot, Blue Bloods, DONNY!, Killing Kennedy, Taxi Brooklyn, The Sopranos as well as multiple episodes of Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU.
Onstage, Antoinette has appeared in the Broadway productions of Torch Song (starring Michael Urie & Mercedes Ruehl) and A View From The Bridge (starring Scarlett Johansson & Liev Schreiber) Also in New York City, she has performed at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Public Theater, 59E59 Theaters, Lincoln Center Institute, Primary Stages, SoHo Playhouse, Cherry Lane Studio, The Flea, Urban Stages and more. Regionally, she most recently played Serafina Delle Rosa in The Rose Tattoo at The New Jersey Shakespeare Festival. Other credits include Becomes a Woman (Mint Theatre Company), The True (Capital Repertory Theatre) and Ah, Wilderness (Hartford Stage). Antoinette originated roles in the back-to-back world premieres of Project Dawn (People’s Light), The Blameless (The Old Globe), A Comedy of Tenors (McCarter & Cleveland Play House) and I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (TheaterWorks Hartford, George Street Playhouse, Asolo Rep & Cincinnatti Playhouse). For her work as Giulia in this last piece she received a “Best Actress” award from Broadway World. She recently returned to this role in the world premiere of Secondo, Jacques LaMarre’s follow-up to his earlier piece, also at TheaterWorks Hartford.
Other favorite roles include Mother Augustina in A World Apart (The Flea), Deborah Harford in A Touch of the Poet (opposite Daniel J Travanti), The Narrator in The Pavilion (Dorset Theatre), Randy in Superior Donuts (Pittsburgh Public Theatre), Diane in Little Dog Laughed (Portland Center Stage), multiple roles in The Laramie Project (TheaterWorks Hartford) and Anna Magnani in the one-woman show, Mamma Roma (Cherry Lane).
Antoinette’s critically-acclaimed one-woman show, How To Be A Good Italian Daughter (In Spite of Myself) played to sold out audiences at both The Cherry Lane Studio Theatre and Ars Nova in New York City The piece was developed at Urban Stages and the Midtown International Theatre Festival and was featured in The Culture Project's Women Center Stage Festival, at the Perry Street Theatre and at CenterStage at Fitchburg State College. How To Be A Good Italian Daughter… has recently been published and is available for licensing through Next Stage Press.
Antoinette is currently working on another original piece, Village Stories, a collage of characters and stories from her Italian ancestry. The piece was presented in multiple workshops produced by Parity Productions and directed by Ludovica Villar-Hauser. Collaborating with the extraordinary musician, John T. La Barbera, the piece weaves music and storytelling to tell the universal story of how the past informs our present and future.