Danny Aiello and Rosie O'Donnell Look to B'way Team Up in Monster

Rosie O'Donnell is looking to team up with Danny Aiello in Folding the Monster, a new Broadway play by Alexander Dinelaris. The drama involves an Italian woman and her father residing in Washington Heights and is expected to bow on the Great White Way in the fall of 2005.

"I love the script," O'Donnell told Broadway.com. "My early dreams as an actress were to play daughter to Danny Aiello and Gene Hackman, but Danny is more like me--he's from New York, he's big... he's the father you dream of." O'Donnell said she reacted to the script emotionally from the first reading. "Everyone has father issues," she pointed out. "Including me."

O'Donnell, best known as a comedic film actress A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle, The Flintstones and host of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, has appeared on Broadway in Grease and Seussical. Last year, she produced the Broadway musical Taboo, which ran 116 performances and was honored with four 2004 Tony Award nominations. She penned the best-selling autobiography Find Me, which she is currently developing into a theatrical play. In addition to her show business efforts, O'Donnell is heavily involved in outside ventures, including R Family Vacations, a gay-friendly vacation travel company, and Rosie's Broadway Kids, a charitable organization that exposes inner city kids to theater.

Aiello was last seen on the New York stage in off-Broadway's Adult Entertainment. On Broadway, he has appeared in Lamppost Reunion, Wheelbarrow Closers, Gemini, Knockout, The Floating Light Bulb, Hurlyburly and The House of Blue Leaves. He was nominated for a 1990 Academy Award for his supporting role in Do the Right Thing.

Dinelaris is best known for contributing additional lyrics and material for the off-Broadway musical Zanna, Don't!, which earned him two 2003 Drama Desk Award nominations. He also penned the plays Big Kids and The Chaos Theories, which premiered as part of the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival.

A developmental reading of Folding the Monster was presented at the Variety Arts Theatre in 2004 starring Aiello, Polly Draper, Joe Cortese, Lori Wilner, Sal Tuzzolo and Bill Fairbairm under the auspices of Shotgun Producers, Inc.