Nine a.m. on a Saturday is frightfully early for most theater people, and actress Theresa Gambacorta proves this by announcing she'll be fielding questions from beneath the warm blankets of her New York bed.

	Theresa Gambacorta Click photo for larger image. "La Magnani" Where: International Poetry Forum at Carnegie Lecture Hall, Oakland. When: Wednesday, 8 p.m. Tickets: $8 and $12; 412-621-9893 or www.thepoetryforum.org

"A la John and Yoko," she laughs. Imagining herself further into the scenario, she interrupts her description of her one-woman play, "La Magnani," to grumble playfully, "Move over, Yoko!"

It's a fitting introduction to Gambacorta since she'll be in Pittsburgh imagining her way into another famous life, that of the celebrated Italian actress, Anna Magnani.

Gambacorta, a Scranton native, will be performing "La Magnani" as part of the International Poetry Forum's 40th anniversary season. It's a piece she developed as part of an acting workshop in character building, led by her mentor and director Elizabeth Kemp.

She selected Magnani as her subject because she loved Magnani's films, especially "The Rose Tattoo." "You watch 'The Rose Tattoo' and it's like Magnani is in another movie. She's in an altered state. She seems to jump right off the screen."

Gambacorta's research included reading biographies of the great actress in Italian and she's woven pieces of interviews from newspapers into her text.

"The more work I did, the more her character started to fit me like a glove," says Gambacorta, who expresses a deep empathy for Magnani's fierce commitment to family and her belief in the power and necessity of art.

Now 33, Gambacorta completed "La Magnani" four years ago, first performing it off-Broadway. It was seen by New York University's director of Italian Studies and she was invited to perform at NYU. There, her work was seen by a friend of Samuel Hazo, founder and director of the International Poetry Forum, who invited her to Pittsburgh.

Gambacorta says she has tried to infuse the play with the sense of abandonment, mistrust and betrayal that Magnani felt throughout her life, but that her real focus is on Magnani's triumphs over those difficulties. She begins by invoking Magnani's singular triumph, her receipt of the Oscar in 1956 for "The Rose Tattoo."

But this most public triumph is not her only one. Gambacorta talks also of Magnani's singing and of her efforts to bring her art to various neighborhoods in Rome during the darkness of World War II, and life under Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

"I'm coming to Pittsburgh to share this woman's life," says Gambacorta. "I hope it touches you the way it touches me."