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Restaurant diners and the staff that wait on them: a new play at Philly Fringe Festival

'I think anyone who works in restaurants has a love-hate relationship with it in general," Gianna Lozzi says. "Everybody likes to complain about it, but there's a reason none of us ever leave."

Job as art: "Right Behind" playwright Gianna Lozzi (right) with costars Madison Caudullo and Rocco Rosanio.
Job as art: "Right Behind" playwright Gianna Lozzi (right) with costars Madison Caudullo and Rocco Rosanio.Read moreTOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer

'I think anyone who works in restaurants has a love-hate relationship with it in general," Gianna Lozzi says. "Everybody likes to complain about it, but there's a reason none of us ever leave."

Lozzi, a Girard Academic Music Program graduate with a theater degree from Arcadia University, has always had a passion for stagecraft, and for the years she has logged in restaurants.

She explores the relationship between her interrelated vocations with her new original play, Right Behind, debuting Thursday at Connie's Ric-Rac as part of the 2016 Fringe Festival. Set in a fictional restaurant, the show hopes to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the inner lives of beleaguered service-industry professionals.

Her waitressing jobs include Royal Tavern and Cochon, and she now works at Square Pie, the excellent pizzeria from chef Gene Giuffi.

It has been an overwhelmingly positive experience spanning the last decade - but, just like any other job, it has its quirks. Sure, the money and flexible scheduling are solid, Lozzi says, but it's much more about the relationships she has developed, with coworkers and customers alike.

Waiting tables has been such a constant in Lozzi's life that when it came time last year for her to develop an original script for her senior thesis at Arcadia, she knew where to start digging. She began by penning a series of unconnected skits featuring over-the-top customers, but soon realized that the staff members featured in her scenes could have interesting stories to tell, too.

This seed of an idea eventually became Right Behind, a one-act comedy named after the slang servers use to warn coworkers that they're squeezing by them in a tight space. "In a sense, I started this play 10 years ago, because that's when I got into the restaurant industry," says Lozzi, who has cast herself as Sarah, an eager-but-awkward waitress starting her first shift at a restaurant already run by a thick-as-thieves staff. "It prepares you for the world." Everyone "goes out to eat, so you learn how to deal with all kinds of people."

Staged at Connie's Ric-Rac - where Lozzi also works part time as a bartender - Right Behind is a family affair, with both of Lozzi's families contributing. Lozzi's brother, Temple film student Freddie, is directing the play. Her father, Fred, and her fiance, former Royal Tavern bartender Jake Wolf, stopped by the other day to build from scratch a stage extension for the play. But she has also recruited several former coworkers, each able to provide some authentic perspective to the production.

Lozzi cast her friend and former boss, Royal Tavern general manager Josie Newman, as a series of nightmarish female customers - one of whom breaks all five cardinal rules of bad customer behavior in one sitting (such as splitting the check a million different ways). Newman is having fun with it, even if the roles mess with her front-of-house brain a bit. "Sometimes, after I've finished [acting], I feel horrible, like I need to apologize and explain that I'm really not that mean," says Newman, who's quick to point out that she has "never served anyone as bad as the characters I'm playing."

Rocco Rosanio, an actor and former Connie's bar manager, who has also worked as a short-order cook, food runner, buser, and juice-bar attendee, portrays Julian, a world-weary bartender carrying on a romance with veteran server Dana, played by Lozzi's Arcadia classmate Madison Caudullo. While he hopes theatergoers "take the play as an opportunity to laugh," he also thinks it can help "people realize how hard employees in the service industry work to make other people happy."

Azuka Theater producing artistic director Kevin Glaccum, who taught Lozzi in several Arcadia theater courses, is acting as the production's informal adviser, offering advice on marketing, and stopping by rehearsals to share feedback. "From fine dining to McDonald's, everyone has had to deal with customers the way the play depicts them," he says. "It's such an interesting relationship. It runs the gamut of experience, from incredibly nice people who are generous tippers and fun to be around to incredibly demanding, obnoxious customers." Glaccum would know: He worked for 27 years as a bartender at Woody's, a Center City landmark.

Jimmy Guckin, the technical director of Play & Players Theatre in Rittenhouse, has taken on a comparable back-of-house role in Right Behind: He's Ronnie, a sarcastic, abrasive, and uncompromising chef who seems to derive glee from tangling with difficult diners. (Naturally, he gets some of the play's best lines.) "I'm hoping that seeing this play will give people a little insight into what it's actually like to work in a restaurant," he says. "Hopefully, the next time they go to one, they'll be less quick to harshly judge."

THEATER

Right Behind

Thursday to Sunday at Connie's Ric-Rac, 1132 S. Ninth St.

Tickets: $20, at fringearts.com.

(A portion of proceeds support the Attic Youth Center, NorthEast Treatment Centers, Camp Twitch and Shout.)

Information: conniesricrac.com or 267-908-4311. Also, rightbehindtheplay.com and on Instagram and Twitter, @rightbehindplay.

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