Marc Levitt’s Triple Decker is a one-hour story, with music, of the history of a fictional triple-decker tenement in South Providence, Rhode Island and of six families from six immigrant groups who lived in the house over the course of sixty years. These groups, Armenian, Cape Verdean, African, Dominican, Cambodian and Irish, change themselves, each other and the idea of what being an American means during their everyday interaction. Mr. Levitt explores the stories and myths these families brought to the United States while depicting how immigration and the subsequent living in an America at war, peace, depression and prosperity transformed their lives.

Along with the narrative, music is performed by musicians from the nations represented in the piece. The score combines music that might have been brought to the United States by the Triple Decker’s inhabitants, with reconfigured American popular music and original music created for Triple Decker. Marc Levitt’s Triple Decker is the story of the American immigrant experience, touching on the joy, sadness, fear and utopian possibilities inherent in our nation’s unique multi-cultural experiment.

Triple Decker has been performed since 1995, in schools (High School and College), theaters, churches and festivals. It can be a springboard for discussing the history of immigration, current immigration policy, the creation of an ‘American’ culture and the meaning and importance of diversity.

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