To pirate from Shakespeare, it was a question of to argh, or not to argh. Here’s why: For the production, which ran through Jan. 31, DiStasi did his digging to find out whether pirates were really like.

“I wanted to find out why the stereotypical pirate character and voice that everyone imitates so often exists,” says DiStasi, an Evanston resident who traces his paternal roots to Telese, Italy near Naples. (DiStasi’s mother was Irish.) With the help of dialect coach Eva Breneman, he decided “to embrace the pirate stereotypes, since ‘Treasure Island’ is where they all began. But I’ve tried to walk the line between the stereotypical pirate cartoon character with a gravelly West Country English accent and something multi-leveled and real. It’s been challenging but also a lot of fun.”

And in fact, it’s been an improbable but incredible journey since DiStasi and seven other Northwestern University students started Lookingglass in 1988. One of those was David Schwimmer, who went on to stardom in the long-running TV sitcom “Friends.”

After a very successful trip where the collegiate actors sent themselves to the Edinburgh, Scotland theater festival, Schwimmer came up with the idea for a theater company while DiStasi was a senior. “We spent our early 20s creating original works of theatre … and then moving around from space to space for 15 years,” he recalls. “We studied gymnastics, dance, music and more to make our particular brand of storytelling as exciting as possible. And we were lucky to have some big successes and critical acclaim in those early years.”

Those successes include 62 world premieres, 101 Joseph Jefferson awards and nominations, and a move to Chicago’s landmark Water Tower Water Works in June 2003. Through it all, DiStasi has maintained passionate dedication to his craft — one that has seen him stretch his body and talents to the limit.

“I guess I’ve learned that big risks pay off,” DiStasi says. “I’ve spent the past 10 years taking physical risks — with circus arts and acrobatics as a significant part of my theatrical work — and emotional and character risks.” This includes DiStasi’s decision to sing in the Lookingglass musical production “Eastland,” “even though I’m not a trained singer.” What’s more, the part demanded that he deliver the goods in a grinding, Tom Waits-style voice.

“But amazingly I’ve gotten away with many of these risks so far,” DiStasi notes. “I knock on wood as I say this and hope the risk taking will continue to pay off for me as I approach my 50th birthday.” That adds up to more than half his life as an anchor at Lookingglass — and if DiStasi looks in the mirror, he has every reason to be proud.

It’s one thing to hone your talent as a professional poet — not easy in a field filled with sticky sentiment — but quite another to take it to a level where people entrust you to turn their most personal details into powerful verse.

Yet Cin Salach — the talent behind poemgrown — ranks as a poetess of uncommon ability, poise and sensitivity. Her business is simple to describe, but difficult to do as artistic disciplines go: Salach interviews clients to create custom poems often presented as gifts.

Italian on her father’s side via Sicily (Cellaccio was likely the family’s original last name) Salach describes her current calling as one that has brewed her entire life. “It’s a combination of everything I’ve learned so far and everything I love most: Poetry, ritual, relationship, love and collaboration,” she says.

In business now for two years, Salach began poemgrown almost by accident. Tapped to donate to a silent auction, she offered a custom poem. The winning bidder asked Salach to compose a poem for her daughter’s 7th birthday. “I asked a handful of questions, then took her answers and intentions and wrote a poem called ‘Frost and Feathers,’” she recalls. “When I sent her the finished piece, she sent an email back saying ‘Best gift ever!’ That’s when I knew, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

She adds: “A lot of people are intimidated by poetry. They think it is beyond them. When they see the poem I wrote using their thoughts, their memories, they are able to experience poetry in a whole new way, a real, tangible way: a way that will feed them for the rest of their lives.”

Salach’s talents extend beyond her business. She’s published two books of poems: “Looking for a Soft Place to Land” (Tia Chucha Press) and 2014 release “when I am yes” (JackLeg Press). She’s also released a CD with her band, ten tongues; on “A Wide Arc,” she sets her work to the experimental, electro-acoustic rhythms.

“Working with musicians, photographers, sculptors, dancers and painters has been a favorite part of my poetry ‘career,’” she says. And about a year ago, Salach started teaming up with ceramic artist Tracey Steffora: “Our poemgrown customers now have the option of choosing a line from their custom poem and having Tracey carve it on a hand-thrown stoneware mug, bowl or vase. Her work is beautiful.”

So is Salach’s. “Poetry often feels like prayer to me,” she explains. “Before I can write, I need to listen. Feeding my spiritual life, paying attention to my relationships, parenting, having a writing discipline, all help to keep the poetry well full.”

That spiritual side holds special meaning for Salach, who also facilitates a writers’ group through Chicago’s LaSalle Street Church. “I have a quote on my office wall from Frederick Buechner: ‘The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.’ Poemgrown is that place for me.”

For more information on Cin Salach, visit poemgrown.com or email cinsalach@gmail.com.

“It’s about 25 centuries old as a medium and if we want to be correct, we should give credit to the Greeks for the invention,” says Matteo Randi, educational director at Chicago Mosaic. “But the Romans who traveled and explored in Greece learned this craft and brought it back to Rome.”

When they did, Ravenna became one of the most important centers for mosaic art in the Roman world, as it was capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until 476 A.D. Randi happens to hail from Ravenna, and has practiced in mosaics since age 9. He still uses hammers with crescent-shaped heads–given to him as a youth–that look almost identical to the ones the Romans wielded.

His lifelong love for mosaics brought him to a place that’s the only non-profit mosaic school in the U.S. Karen Ami founded it 10 years ago in a garage, and it has blossomed into a spacious spread that’s part gallery, part workshop, and all heart. It’s home to 12 teachers leading 17 to 20 classes, and acts as a magnet for visiting artists from all over the world.

Along the walls you’ll find reproductions of Byzantine church mosaics found in Ravenna–one way that students at the school grasp the basics. “There’s a lot to making the reproduction; to learn the roots and the grammar, if we consider mosaic a language,” Randi says. “It’s in constant evolution and always changing. Its amazing how you can do this poetry using the same words.”

Speaking of visual poetry, some of Randi’s teachers are represented with masterful works on display. You can see “Cantante Di Blues” by Verdiano Marzi, who teaches at the Louvre in Paris. Paolo Racagni’s “Situazione” is on site as well. Both pieces were finished in 2014.

And while Randi has a modest bearing, the art in his Chicago Mosaic studio reflects a compelling mix of flow and force. “Riposo” (from 2013) features a long slice of cocoa-colored sandstone he fetched from a riverbed while driving to Chicago from New York. To mine it, he turned off his route home after he saw the same color stone beckoning from a nearby peak. “In the river, it’s always what you find on the side of the mountain, and for a mosaic artist the riverbed is like a quarry,” he says.

Yet like the other teachers there, Randi isn’t content to keep the secrets of mosaic making to himself. This man–who can split a large stone in several chops to a neat square the size of nail head–has a small disciple in his daughter. At age 4, she produced a playful square mosaic on display, flecked with joyful bursts of white, orange, blue and green.

It has a fitting theme, even as mosaic traditions take flight in a new generation. Says Randi: “She told me the story of cocoon and a butterfly.”

For the 6th consecutive year, CMS will welcome back mosaic Maestro Verdiano Marzi for two exclusive workshops in March 2015.

A highly regard artist, Marzi is one of the world’s most sought-after teachers of contemporary mosaic.

Two four-day workshops from March 12 to 15 and from March 19 to 22 include complete access to the CMS studio, use of tools and a comprehensive selection of materials.

Each workshop is $850; class size is limited to 12 students.

The Chicago Mosaic School is located at 1806 W. Cuyler Ave., Chicago. For details, call 773-975-8966, email info@chicagomosaicschool.com or visit chicagomosaicschool.com.

The gambles of such hopeful parents often end in failure or a child’s disinterest. But in Milioto’s case, it definitely resulted in huge win. Growing up Toronto, he studied his craft extensively at the Royal Conservatory, University of Western Ontario (where hearted a top scholarship in piano performance) and McGill University — guided by his first teacher, Victor Plenter.

Today, Milioto serves as Music Director of the Skokie Valley Symphony Orchestra, and has many impressive collaborations and career achievements to his credit. The child of Sicilian parents, both from Cattolica Eraclea, Milioto has conducted, coached and performed on piano in the Chicago area for more than 10 years — appearing everywhere from Symphony Center to the Pritzker Pavilion and Ravinia.

Milioto’s next performance with Skokie Valley takes place Feb. 15. “Music and the Spoken Word” will mark Richard Strauss’ 150th Anniversary. It will also feature an edgy treat: a performance of Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” accented by play passages acted by The Back Room Shakespeare Project.

Milioto is also the co-founder and conductor of the New Millennium Orchestra, which boasts a repertoire ranging from traditional and contemporary classical masterworks to genre-bending forays into live remixes, improvisations, world music and collaborations with jazz and hip-hop artists. Time Out Chicago has hailed NMO as “one of the best additions to the city’s scene.”

Creativity runs in the family, too. Milioto’s father played drums and sings in a choir and at Italian events. His wife Joanie Schultz, a Chicago area stage director, is working at the Victory Gardens Theatre through 2016 on a Reginald Denham Fellowship through the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation.

Meanwhile, Milioto remains steeped in his family’s roots. He speaks fluent Italian, learning the Sicilian dialect as a child. “All of the people surrounding me were Sicilian speakers, all from the same town, so I had to learn it. I really appreciate that I have that and I know that.”

His musical approach reflects the passion of his lineage. “For me, the thing that I most feel most strongly about as a conductor and pianist is the collaborative process. I’m happiest on the podium creating a piece of music with the players that I know best, and with the integrity of representing the composer well. That collaboration really warms my heart and makes me want to do my best.”

In summing up his special, superlative philosophy of music making, Milioto expresses it thus: “Notes printed on a page are not music. The original composers just wanted their music to be represented well. Music is what we make of that: to represent the composer with a high level of integrity. It’s a gift and a special thing to do, and I realize that. I’m so appreciative.”

The Skokie Valley Symphony performs “Music and the Spoken Word,” 3 p.m. Feb. 15 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd. in Skokie. Tickets are $5-$44. For more information, email info@svso.org, phone 847-679-9501 x3014 or visit svso.org.

Lupo, who has an Italian father and a half-Italian mother, grew up with music all around her. “My [maternal] grandparents sang in church choirs in New York, where my mother grew up,” she says. “My mother had a beautiful voice; I was always around music and I loved to sing.” She too enjoyed choir singing (in high school), yet earned a degree in dance at Northwestern University.

Though Lupo was always dancing post graduation, the singing bug never left her. “Seven years out of college I decided to do more with bands, and I was in my late 20s when I considered myself more of a singer.” (In a return to bodily grace, Lupo now leads annual yoga retreats in Italy to Orvieto, located in southwestern Umbria.)

As a singer, Lupo first worked with Italian bandleader Frank Amorosi, a noted veteran of the Chicago area scene. From Lupo’s work with him, she learned how to lead a band; over the past 15 years, she has entertained audiences at the Peninsula Hotel, Ritz-Carlton, Park Hyatt and North Shore Country Club.

“The most rewarding part of my work is to feel the appreciation and see the joy of people happy with the music,” says Lupo, who works with eight musicians. “It’s exciting when the band exceeds expectations and the party goes better that they ever thought it could. That’s especially true at weddings, where it’s a once in a lifetime event. It’s a great responsibility and I want to make sure I do the best job I can.”

Given her Italian lineage, it makes sense that Lupo excels at standards made popular by Frank Sinatra (“All the Way”) and Tony Bennett (“Fly Me to the Moon”). But her band covers music stretching from the Big Band era to Motown classics to contemporary hits. Behind it all stands Lupo, boasting a voice as creamy as a warm latte sipped by the Trevi Fountain.

Yet you don’t need an invitation to hear Lupo display her talents live. Several times a month she performs with pianist Jeremy Kahn, usually on Thursdays and Fridays, at Perry’s Steakhouse & Grille, a fine dining restaurant in Oak Brook.

“We sing all the songs in the Great American Songbook,” she says. “That’s all we do: Sinatra, Bennett, Diana Krall, Michael Buble. And we perform four or five sets a night, so we have to play an expansive repertoire.”

That said, “As you get older, it’s easier to fall back on the music you know,” she notes. “But working in the band, I have to stay current. It’s great fun and keeps me young.”

To learn more about Patti Lupo, visit pattilupomusic.com, email patti@pattilupomusic.com or call 847-251-0595.

As for what drew him to Indian music, Monaco, 57, says it began about 20 years ago; he started studying under Mushtaq Hussain Khan of Mumbai, India. “He was giving concerts around the U.S. but Chicago was his base for a year,” Monaco recalls. “I was very lucky to meet him; it was one of those ‘meant to be’ things, being at the right place at the right time.”

Monaco (who divides his time between Washington state and Chicago Heights, Ill.), recalls a childhood full of musical stimulation. Croatian on his mother’s side, he traces his paternal roots to Cantolupo, northeast of Naples (his grandfather) and Palermo, Sicily (his grandmother). His grandparents settled in Montana, and when Monaco visited there as a kid, “my grandfather had a little portable record player and loved to listen to Polka music. He played mouth harp and a bit of harmonica, things he probably picked up from working on the railroad. The buzzy drone of the mouth harp fascinated me. It was melodic and rhythmic at the same time, somewhat the musical quality found in sitar music.”

Monaco grew up on Italian-American favorites, from Dean Martin to accordionist Dick Contino, and as a child of the 1960s embraced The Beatles, Beach Boys and Rolling Stones. When he started sitar training, he waited about five years before performing in public. He formed Sandalwood Sitar Music Ensemble with his wife Gigi Wong-Monaco (another big Beatles fan) around 1999, and by 2003 had a solid repertoire that included not only Indian classical music and Hindi film songs, “but also my original compositions with a Middle-Eastern flair, and even some Beatles cover tunes.” Monaco was in fact featured in an April 2012 issue of Newsweek dedicated to the 50th anniversary of The Beatles, in a feature on tribute bands from around the globe.

After playing venues ranging from the Old Town School of Folk Music to lavish Indian weddings, now Monaco is bearing down in the studio, completing work on a Sandalwood album due in Fall 2012. He also runs the Wonderwall Music Shoppe & Emporium with Gigi, a store that sells Indian instruments and ukuleles.

During the rare free moment, you might find Monaco creating visual art or even freelance architectural design. “For me, everything goes in cycles,” he says. “Everything has its time, runs its course and then manifests itself in some other creative way. Music. Art. Gardening. Writing. Meditating. It’s all good.”

To find out more about Clar Monaco, Sandalwood Sitar Music Ensemble, sitar lessons or Indian musical instruments, visit sandalwood-music.com or sitaremporium.com.

But at 69, Missimi is active to the point of putting men a third his age to shame. He spoke to Fra Noi between frantic paces in Brunswick, Maine, where he was directing a production of “Gypsy.” “Lots of my former students from Northwestern are here, so it’s nice to have a little reunion,” he says. “This is the fourth ‘Gypsy’ I’ve done; I just love it. It’s a great American classic.”

To call Missimi an Italian-American classic hardly counts as exaggeration. Yet his remarkable academic career surprises him, given that his parents came from Italy with little education. “My mom went to the third grade and my dad never attended school at all. They were peasants.” His mother’s family is from the Bari area; his father’s clan hails from Sant’agata di Militello in Sicily, near Messina.

“Italian was the first language in our house,” he recalls. “My parents spoke it; my grandparents lived with us and they spoke it. I’d love to be able to speak Italian to my relatives before I die.”

One measure of Missimi’s teaching greatness comes via the world-class actors who’ve attended his classes, such as Heather Headley, who has won a Tony Award (for “Aida”), a Grammy Award, and a Drama Desk Award. “I was there when she gave her very first audition at Northwestern,” Missimi says. He adds this next comment in the present tense, a sign of his unconventional retirement: “They come to us with a great deal of talent, and we try to mold them into great professionals.”

Missimi might still be at Northwestern, had he not decided to step back after a cancer diagnosis five years ago. As it turns out, Missimi represents a textbook example of thriving post-illness. But as he puts it: “It’s time for me to move on. I directed three or four shows a year at Northwestern and they were so kind to me, so very, very kind. They’ve asked me to do other things, but it’s time to cut the apron strings. I’m still very, very connected to Northwestern and I hope I will be, because I love them.”

Meanwhile, Missimi may pop up at the Marriott Theatre, where he’s directed some three dozen shows–and wants to take a turn as a student for a change.

“I’m trying to develop my skills with writing,” he says. “I have a screenplay I’m trying to peddle. And for the past 21 years, I haven’t done much traveling. Before that, I ran around a lot directing operas. So I’d love to go back to directing opera: I’m very good at directing operas with big choruses.”

“As you get older you get more sentimental, and you’re happy to survive and to just be able to do this,” says Angotti, who’s of Calabrese lineage on his father’s side. “When you haven’t had the major success you hoped for when you were younger, you still keep trying harder; you keep trying to prove to yourself and your audience what you can do.”

To be sure, Angotti has drive and passion that should be the envy of guys half his age. “People and Places” marks the 11th disc he’s released since 1986, and he made it by tapping some of the city’s best players, from drummers Brad Elvis (The Romantics) and Mike Zelenko (Material Issue) to keyboardist-vocalist Carolyn Engelmann (the Chamber Strings).

“I worked in three different studios with four different drummers; I had never done more than two studios and two drummers before that,” Angotti says. “I brought in Steve Dawson [of Dolly Varden] to sing harmonies and play slide guitar; Joel Patterson played pedal steel. I sang a duet with Jacky Dustin, who is a band called The August, on a country song called ‘Same Ol’ We.’ And it was a lot of fun: There were never any roadblocks or aggravation. I felt good about the songs going in and really went the extra mile to get things the way I wanted them.”

For Angotti, “People and Places” marks the latest chapter in a musical life steeped in the British Invasion. The son of a steel worker, “I listened to Italian music from my father’s side,” he recalls. His mother, who was Eastern European, was a polka fan, “but she also bought me my first pop records: The Hollies, Gene Pitney, Tom Jones. My dad was also a country fan so I was listening to Waylon Jennings, Buck Owens and Johnny Cash. And Elvis — my Dad liked Elvis.”

As a kid, Angotti absorbed it all, along with The Beatles and Rolling Stones, and you can hear it in his sound, which salutes those influences without wallowing in nostalgia. That’s because as a live player, Angotti has to stay rooted in the present. “I’m having a bit more fun and joy in what I’m doing,” he says. “I’m still playing live and I’m getting better as a guitar player and singer. And more new people are coming out to live shows, so obviously they are seeing something that they like.”

Check out Phil Angotti’s music at philangotti.com

“Every time I’ve visited Seville, Spain to study, I’ve felt very comfortable and at home,” says Mangiameli, who today runs her own dance studio in the Logan Square neighborhood. “Italians and Spaniards seem to share cultural similarities that make them compatible. I felt an affinity with their music and I suppose you have to love something to be able to transmit it to others effectively.”

That she does. In addition to teaching a full schedule of classes at the Studio Mangiameli, she’s choreographing and directing “Quejíos – Cries In The Air,” the studio’s fifth annual show. And the DePaul University theater school graduate returned to the stage in 2012 after a decade’s absence as celebrity chef Rick Bayless’ leading lady in the ground breaking “Cascabel” at the Lookingglass Theater.

Mangiameli has also collaborated with some of Chicago’s most critically acclaimed groups including Las Guitarras De España, Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater and Chicago Sinfonietta. Yet she’s hardly one to rest on her laurels as a dancer.

“Development of one’s own style takes years and it’s simply part of the dancer’s journey,” she says. “I’m always refining, always try to clean up the details. And I’m becoming more comfortable working with what the singer is giving me at any given moment. Learning to exist in the present and allow moments of stillness has been a big part of my growth.”

For Mangiameli, the journey began at age 6. “I was taking ballet classes but grew restless and switched to tap,” she recalls. “Then I left dance for many years and dabbled with it again in college. Nothing really stuck until I discovered flamenco years later.” She took her first class in 2001, and was hooked: “What drew me to flamenco was undoubtedly the music and the singing: the plaintive, melismatic voice, the intricate rhythms and syncopation of the guitar. I always had a good ear for rhythm and I love the role of dancer as musician in flamenco.”

Looking ahead, Mangiameli hopes to organize a trip for her students to Spain (where she studied with Juan Polvillo, La Choni, Carmen Gamero and singer Esperanza Fernandez). And while the Midwest may seem like an unusual choice for an Italian to practice a Spanish art form, it keeps her, to quote a familiar dance expression, on her toes.

“I’m often asked, ‘What is an Italian doing dancing flamenco in Chicago?’ I suppose I’m a testament to just how small the world has become,” she says. “Possibilities are endless as long as your heart is in the right place.”

Not bad for a guy who, in his day job as an advertising copywriter, won 80 awards in the last six years, and still managed to record a children’s album.

“The trick is to figure out what your gifts are and use them,” says Haas, whose mother’s family hails from Casina di Buti in Tuscany. “I’ve never seen anyone bring a live audience to life the way I do. But I’m not there for me, I’m there for the children. I have many talents, but I’m about developing their talent.”

Haas’ maternal grandparents exerted a huge influence on his life path. He was close to his grandfather, Narciso Buti, who taught him Italian. “He went around the kitchen and pointed to everything in Italian,” Haas recalls. “He wanted to make sure everything cultural was not lost. After that, he lit a cigarette and said, ‘You wanna smoke-a?’ I was 7 years old, but he had smoked cigarettes since he was 7.”

Even in casual conversation, Haas lights up with performer’s charisma. Aside from taking the Mayor of Storyville to many schools, he’s also written an Aladdin “Look and Find” book for Disney, and came close to the big time in 1997, as one of 10 finalists for a reboot of “Capt. Kangaroo” by Saban Entertainment. He flew to Hollywood and auditioned well, but perhaps his thin frame hurt him. “The guy they chose was a beekeeper from New England, and he looked like Sebastian Cabot,” Haas recalls. “But the kids didn’t buy it.”

Not that Haas stays down long. He’s developing a series of five-minute Mayor of Storyville “webisodes” for a YouTube channel he plans to create.

“Kids need to be constantly surprised, and I have a childlike curiosity,” Haas says. “I’m an entertainer and whatever it takes to draw the kids in, I’ll do it.”

That is, up to a point: “When I see shows where the parents are made to look stupid, it drives me nuts,” Haas says. “It’s about respect, not just for adults, but for the kids. It’s something we grew up with, and it’s part of our fabric. My nonno wore a suit, tie and hat to a job as a janitor. To him, that was respect: ‘I may be a janitor, but that does not define my life.’ And with The Mayor of Storyville, I wanted something respectful.”

For more information on Kenny Haas, visit www.mayorofstoryville.com. To download free tracks from “Now This Is Fun,” visitwww.cdbaby.com/cd/mayorofstoryville.