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Joseph Torsella was elected Pennsylvania treasurer in 2016. The longtime Democratic fixture lasted one term, losing his reelection bid.
Now six years on from that unsuccessful run, he is reentering public life, this time on stage.
“Declaration,” a one-man show written by Torsella, 62, features a former elected official named “Joe,” who is not-so-loosely based on Torsella. It has a two-week run at the Arden Theater as part of the Philly Fringe Festival.
Like Torsella, “Joe” suffers a political loss and must rediscover his footing. His bedrock is the Declaration of Independence, with which “Joe,” like Torsella, has had a changing relationship through different stages of his life.
“He understood it, probably badly as a kid, as a public figure, as a father, but ultimately as a citizen,” Torsella said in an interview during rehearsal. “What the play is about is finding one’s civic voice after losing the things that you thought entitled you to one, like office.”
The play also marks the return of Nick Stuccio, the founding director of the Fringe Festival who stepped down two years ago. Stuccio is executive producer of “Declaration.”
Torsella and Stuccio have known each other since they were teenagers at the Wyoming Seminary, a Jesuit prep school near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Stuccio says Torsella gave him his first taste of theater when he cast him in a high school production of Neil Simon’s “The Good Doctor.”
“Joe at 15 had a lot of initiative and we went to this very stodgy high school,” Stuccio said. “I was like, ‘Wow, look at this guy, this student that’s going to do this in our school. That is so cool. I’m going to audition for this.’”
“I was a terrible actor,” he said. “Joe, do you remember how bad you thought I was?”
“He was great,” Torsella said.
“I was bad,” Stuccio said. “But I also watched you be a producer. You were a fantastic producer because we had no money.”
Former Pennsylvania treasurer Joe Torsella (right) teams up with an old friend, Nick Stuccio, to produce his one-man show. Stuccio, a cofounder of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and a high school classmate of Torsella, is executive producer of ”Declaration.” (Emma Lee/WHYY)
From theater to politics, and back again
After high school, Stuccio studied dance and joined the Pennsylvania Ballet for eight years before founding the Philly Fringe.
Torsella’s life took a different route.
“I applied to a school that I won’t mention that rejected me for theater. I ended up going to [The University of Pennsylvania], which I loved,” he said. “My first year there I did theater but ended up majoring in history and economics and turned away from theater.”
After college, Torsella proved a political whiz kid, serving under former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell as a deputy mayor when he was 29. He later became the founding director of the National Constitution Center at 34. Torsella unsuccessfully pursued seats in the U.S. House and Senate, before being elected Pennsylvania’s treasurer.
Through all of that, acting never left his thoughts.
“I always said that when I had time and opportunity I really wanted to get back to it. I used to say it to my kids,” Torsella said. “I remember our youngest daughter elbowing me when we were watching something, and she essentially said, ‘When is one day going to be day one?’”
Torsella dipped his toe back into theater earlier this year with a role in William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” with ActorsNET of Bucks County. “Declaration” is his first original script.
“It’s a really personal play,” he said. “It isn’t a history lesson. It isn’t a memoir, but it’s very much inspired by things that I’ve lived through.”