alianiello

Davis Alianiello, a senior at Bishop Hendricken High School, has become a published playwright. Playscripts, Inc., an independent publisher of new plays, has agreed to publish Alianiello’s one-act comedy The Moustache, which tells of the mild-mannered chancellor of a fictional nation who sports a talking moustache that governs his life.

Alianiello, of Providence, wrote the play when he was a 15-year-old sophomore at Hendricken, the all-male Catholic high school in Warwick. He has since written two more plays, including Rough Draft, which is slated for a performance Off-Broadway this year in New York.

The Moustache was produced last year as part of Hendricken’s New Artist Play Festival, using Hendricken students and girls from high schools around the state. Alianiello, 17, continued to add to and edit the script after the performance.

In the play, meek Phil Stevenson is advised to grow a moustache in order to boost his confidence. The idea is wildly successful until the moustache begins talking to him. What follows is a darkly satirical tale of corruption, with the once docile Stevenson becoming a power-hungry fiend on orders from his scheming moustache.

In May, Alianiello, who has been active in the Hendricken theater program for the past four years, sent out copies of The Moustache to 10 national publishing houses. He got a reply from Playscripts in New York in August. The play will now appear in the company’s catalog of dramatic works.