Sometimes globalism is a good thing. Consider NYC–based Play Company’s collaboration with Mexico City’s Por Piedad Teatro—together they’ve created a new play derived from Una giornata particolare, the classic Italian film. Working on a Special Day, which runs through Feb. 10 at 59E59 Theaters, follows two actors adapting Ettore Scola’s 1977 film.

In the movie, Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni star as a housewife and solitary bachelor who find themselves alone in their apartment complex on May 8, 1938—the day Hitler visits Mussolini’s Rome. According to Play Company founding producer Kate Loewald, the play has a meta-theatrical layer. “It’s very much about how two actors, Ana Graham and Antonio Vega, in our case, bring this story to life.” The stage is bare except for a few key props, and the actors draw set pieces with chalk on the theatre walls. Says Loewald, “Scola actually wrote a play of the story after the film—so with his permission, we are using a lot of that text in the play.”