Mario Fratti was a famous playwright, the "American Pirandello" author of the comedy Nine, winner of 7 Tony Awards, drama critic and world-renowned university professor. One of the best-known Italian-American exponents in the field of literary, theatrical and artistic criticism in the U.S.A., Fratti was Executive Director of the international cooperation program "Two Houses, One Tradition" between the State of New York and Italy, created by the Governor of the State of New York Mario Cuomo, in agreement with the Italian Government and promoted, in 1990, by the Magna Grecia International Association chaired by Nino Foti, for which Fratti was also U.S.A. Vice President.

Born in L'Aquila in 1927, he graduated in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice to begin, during the 50s, his career as producer.

In 1959 he produced his first and highly innovative drama entitled Il Nastro, which, despite having secured him the RAI Prize, was never broadcast, as it was then regarded as subversive because it narrated the refusal to confess, under torture, of some partisans, who were later shot by fascists. A politically engaged work, inspired by the values of the Resistance and decidedly "uncomfortable" from the content standpoint.

The reasons that led to the misunderstanding of Fratti's genius are to be found in the Italian socio-cultural context of those years: a climate of centrist governments, of the anti-communist front, of repressive and obtuse censorship that affected every form of artistic expression not devoted to simple entertainment, absolutely unsuitable for the understanding and official recognition of such theatre works.

The author thus to write for the theatre started at the age of thirty: after youthful poetic experiences and the writing of a novel set in his hometown and in Venice during the period of the fascist dictatorship, he began to write plays, an activity that would later become his profession.

In 1963, Fratti decided to move to New York, to Broadway, and started teaching at Columbia University and Hunter College, where he taught until 2014. Linked to the circumstance that brought him to the United States: in 1962 he presented his one-act play Suicide at the Spoleto Festival, which pleased Lee Strasberg and invited him to attend the Actors Studio in New York. In that forge of the theatrical avant-garde it was a real success. Others followed, until today. It was precisely in America that Fratti found, in those years, a society where freedom of expression was absolute, revealing itself to the playwright as an incredible reservoir of situations, human characters, family and social conflicts that lend themselves wonderfully to stage dramatization.

In fact, his contact with the American environment contributed to the development of his ideological thought, bringing him closer to the complex problems of contemporary society and of Mankind, explored in its sociality, in the contours of its earthly destiny.

Today Mario Fratti has over 100 operas, translated into 20 languages, which have been performed in 600 theatres all over the world, from America to Europe, from Russia to Japan, from Brazil to China, from Canada to Australia.

An original, refined albeit sharp author, like the unveiling political and social denunciation that he put into his works, capable of combining the elements of the European theatre tradition with the novelties of the American experience. It is precisely this last aspect that made him stand in high regard among American critics, together with his complete mastery of the English language and American literature.

His vast theatrical production also includes comedies and musicals, including Nine, a comedy written in 1981 and freely inspired by the film 81/2 by Federico Fellini, which later became a critically acclaimed musical, with over two thousand performances and the earning of seven "Tony Awards", a prize that in the theatre is on a par with the Oscar for the cinema. The latest version, starring Antonio Banderas, was on the bill for many months at the Eugene O'Neil Theatre on Broadway.

He was presented with numerous awards, including the O'Neil Selection Award, the Richard Rogers, the Outer Critics, Heritage and Culture, eight Drama Desk Awards and the John Fante Award.