poet, performance-artist, memoirist, songwriter, cantastoria, pluralist by nature
Inspired by the demos, cacophonous opera of pushcart peddler street cries, the roots of theater in the agora. Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is an American author, poet, cantastoria, songwriter, and performance-artist whose stage presence has been called riveting and volcanic. She was born in the Bronx and is internationally known for her raw and authentic New York voice and profound memoir work which casts light onto LGBTQ+ lives, domestic violence, intergenerational trauma and post-war CPTSD. She is a long-term survivor of teenage Hodgkin's Lymphoma, and advocates for disability equality.
Lanzillotto has performed at City Lore, The Kitchen, Franklin Furance, Dixon Place, The Guggenheim Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Museum of the City of New York, The Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, in Italy at Napoli Citta Libro, Fondazione Sassi, Matera; Sicilia Queer Filmfest, Palermo, Università degli Studi di Salerno at Fisciano, Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, Napoli; Associazione Lette di Sera, Potenza, and in Ireland.
"Staggering. Ground-shaking. Annie is the one, an illumination of humanity. Power and poignancy amazingly captured. She gives her heart and soul to the pulse of humanity. We want to listen to these stories that are inherently traumatic because there is light shining through." Salley May, Performance-Artist, Founder of Avant-garde-arama
“Beyond interactive. . . Inclusive and embracing. When you go see Annie, you’re not “at” a show or a reading, you’re essentially in it, and the experience is profoundly refreshing and enriching.” Margaret Mittelbach, Co-Founder / Curator Secret Science Club
“The raw Bronx bellow of passion. Annie Is Essential. Like dandelion greens and dago red and the mother of the vinegar. That’s her. The mother of vinegar.” Jean Feraca, author of I Hear Voices
“The Mother of Vinegar” by Jean Feraca
In the cellar of the house where I grew up, there was an ancient glass cask that held “the mother of the vinegar.” Not everybody had a mother, but we did. She was a little bit scary, that mother, and she was powerful. One whiff, and she’d knock you out. I don’t remember how she got there or how it was that she disappeared one day, but I do remember that she had to be fed to stay alive. We fed her on whatever was left fermenting in the bottom of an old wine bottle, or a glass. Sometimes, someone would throw in a piece of raw spaghetti, and she liked that too, and somehow made it dissolve. That’s how powerful she was, and how precious, like a Queen Bee. And all she had to do was just sit there seething like a placenta in the bottom of that old bottle, fat and purple and juicy. So alive.”
“Prisms of truth and echoes of eternity. It’s a special merit to amplify her voice.”
Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, author of Healing of Soul, Healing of Body
“Annie Lanzillotto is one million talents in one.” Simba Yangala, Founder of Jungledom Network
photo by Lou Guarneri