Aja Nisenson

“As full of talent as she is of spaghetti, she recalls in vivid, sidesplitting detail her trip through Italy as a 21-year-old virgin who becomes a sought-after jazz singer… Nisenson is a natural storyteller, with an ear for impersonations and an eye for glamorous and gritty detail.”
--BACKSTAGE

“I saw this show twice… After that first time, I cried—not immediately, but in the street. I cried over risk, over sexuality, over danger as success and safety as failure, over being a woman and an artist. Isn't that what theatre does at its best—cut you to the core?”
--NYTHEATRE.COM

**** (Four Stars)
“ Like Sarah Silverman, Nisenson dresses her hot self simply—all in black, with comfy sneakers…an engaging portrait of that special time of life when nascent adults go overseas to find themselves, and end up getting into cars with strangers.”
--TIME OUT NEW YORK

“The gorgeous Aja Nisenson demonstrates she can do it all in an autobiographical show about discovering herself in Italy, during which she sings jazz (and a bit of opera), impersonates the colorful people she met with wit and charm, and tells hilarious stories."
--HYREVIEWS.COM

Piccola Cosi, which in Italian means "small like this," was conceived as a playwriting thesis during Aja's senior year at Brown University. The show is based on Aja's experience singing jazz in nightclubs and restaurants during the summer of her junior year abroad in Bologna, Italy. The show traces her development as a woman and a jazz singer, and is a sprawling cacophony of Italian culture and Aja's own fractured understanding of it, where pizzas walk across tables and men appear as smoke in doorways.