Corn Bread & Feta Cheese: Growing Up Fat and Albanian

Exactly who are the Albanians? Does anyone really know? Why does their culture so deny the contributions of the fairer sex? Just what is so darn special about hiding guns in your underwear? And why is the answer to every problem a nice big plate of buke (corn bread) and djath (feta cheese)? Actress Elza Zagreda grapples with these and other cultural conundrums in her self-written, one-woman comedy, Corn Bread & Feta Cheese: Growing Up Fat and Albanian.

While growing up, Elza, like most girls, had to deal with bad complexion, body image issues, well-meaning parents, and arranged dates-from-hell. Unlike most girls, however, Elza did her growing up in New York in a traditional Albanian household where the culture gives men all the power and the language is so old it has no known root! In Corn Bread & Feta Cheese, Elza examines the cultural tightrope she learned to walk between honoring her Albanian family and heritage, and creating a new life and identity for herself in the U.S. of A. Along the way, Elza discovers her own unique voice in a surprising place: the life and words of her Albanian great aunt from half a century ago. Past and present finally come together as Elza juggles life on the cusp of two jarringly different cultures–a quintessentially Albanian world made up of gender constraints, conformity, and tradition, and an American one filled with freedom, individuality and fun.

Elza Zagreda is a graduate of Fordham University, and also holds a Master’s in Dramatic Writing from NYU. She has worked as an actress in such New York venues as The Helen Hayes Theatre (sharing a stage with Vanessa Redgrave and Tim Robbins), the Classic Stage, and the West End Theatre, and does stand-up comedy based on Corn Bread…, at various New York comedy clubs. She has also appeared in work written and directed by Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) and Ellen McLaughlin (Tongue of a Bird). On television she has appeared in Law and Order: SVU and One Life to Live, and has been seen in commercials (she was one of the lovely blondes featured in the 1-800-CALL-ATT commercial with Carrot Top).