Ospedale
Michael Pilch Studio Theatre, Oxford, OX1 3TS
Wednesday 20th May 2026 - Saturday 23rd May 2026
CW: Child abandonment, self harm, references to infanticide, suicide and sexual assault.
‘Do you know what the scaffetta is? We weren’t born here. You know that, yes? So how did we get into this place? Our mothers can’t look after us, or at least, they don’t love us enough to try. That’s what the scaffetta is for. Through there, in one of the walls, there is a hole. On the outside of the hole is Venice. The Venetian mothers bring their children to the scaffetta when they can’t bear to look Marcolina in the eye as they hand over their babies forever. That’s why it was made, so that our mothers could be anonymous. No one will see you do it, you don’t even have to wait to see it received. You don’t even need to say anything. You set your baby down for the last time in the scaffetta, and then you leave, and that’s the last you see of your child.’
Ospedale is a new play set in the Ospedale della Pieta, a Catholic girls' orphanage-slash-music school, in Venice in 1710. It follows the stories of four orphan musicians, Clemenzia, Geltruda, Fiorina and Marcolina, as they grow up in a prosperous institution that loves God, music, and money, but not them.
‘Do you know what the scaffetta is? We weren’t born here. You know that, yes? So how did we get into this place? Our mothers can’t look after us, or at least, they don’t love us enough to try. That’s what the scaffetta is for. Through there, in one of the walls, there is a hole. On the outside of the hole is Venice. The Venetian mothers bring their children to the scaffetta when they can’t bear to look Marcolina in the eye as they hand over their babies forever. That’s why it was made, so that our mothers could be anonymous. No one will see you do it, you don’t even have to wait to see it received. You don’t even need to say anything. You set your baby down for the last time in the scaffetta, and then you leave, and that’s the last you see of your child.’
Ospedale is a new play set in the Ospedale della Pieta, a Catholic girls' orphanage-slash-music school, in Venice in 1710. It follows the stories of four orphan musicians, Clemenzia, Geltruda, Fiorina and Marcolina, as they grow up in a prosperous institution that loves God, music, and money, but not them.
