Interview: Giovanna Sardelli of NEW WORKS FESTIVAL ONLINE at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Champions Boundary-Breaking Theatre

While the theatre world continues to engage in much-needed conversations about how to make our art form more inclusive and equitable, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is offering a tangible example of what that can look like. Its New Works Festival Online will stream an advance look at some innovative plays and musicals from an astoundingly diverse array of theatre makers. Transforming the Tony-winning company's annual festival into a virtual experience, New Works Festival Online offers digital audiences an extraordinary opportunity to view new plays and selections from new musicals, and learn more about the development process in conversations with the playwrights. New Works Festival Online runs April 23 - May 15, 2021 with performances streaming live. Streaming access is available at pay what you can pricing ($10 minimum for a festival pass) at theatreworks.org.

The festival begins Friday, April 23 with a Kickoff Event celebrating TheatreWorks' current commissions and offering an advance peek at some intriguing works in progress. Theatre makers will speak about their projects and may present selections from their shows, including Min Kahng (The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga), The Kilbanes (Weightless), Lynn Rosen (The Imperialists), Geetha Reddy (Safe House), and Mansa Ra (Too Heavy for Your Pocket). Musical highlights of the festival include a sneak peek at the indie folk-rock musical Lizard Boy, before it launches TheatreWorks' 51st season this fall, and an innovative, digital theatre/rap piece inspired by the themes from The Merchant of Venice by the acclaimed group Bay Area Theatre Cypher. Plays include two works which examine the impact and ramifications of the Muslim travel ban - one a comedy exploring friendship in the time of war and the other a drama celebrating the human spirit during crises that divide - as well as a semi-autobiographical dance theatre piece about memory, grief, forgiveness, and freedom.

I recently spoke with Giovanna Sardelli, TheatreWorks Artistic Associate and Director of New Works, from Las Vegas, where she was born and raised and has been spending most of the pandemic away from her actual home in New York. Sardelli has made a career out of championing new works and seeking out voices we may not have heard before, and her enthusiasm for her work is infectious. Any conversation with her is bound to convince you that you need to venture away from the tried and true and take a chance on a playwright you may be unfamiliar with. Not only will it expand your horizons, but you will also be moved and entertained. The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Is this the first time you're presenting the TheatreWorks New Works Festival online?

Yes! I think it's really exciting this year. There's more access and I hope people take advantage of that. There were pieces we had already asked to be part of what was going to be an in-person festival [in 2020], and when it didn't happen, we just kept moving them. And these are wonderful plays and wonderful artists that we wanted to support, and I think now more than ever, artists actually need support. One was A Distinct Society by Kareem Fahmy and it's the play I'm directing. We've been circling around that play for so many months now that we just decided to go ahead and do it virtually. It's also a play that I think would be presented well in whatever form, but certainly would not be compromised in any way by moving online.

And speaking of A Distinct Society, you're quite an accomplished stage director yourself. Since you're also Director of the Festival, how do you decide which of the plays will be directed by you?

Some years, I take the play that is the most challenging, that I think our audience will be grappling with in a different way. Other years, I take a play because it's my relationship with the playwright. The last in-person festival, I did Nan and the Lower Body because the material just suited me and I loved working with Jessica Dickey, the playwright. This year I've been working with Kareem Fahmy on this play and I knew our audience would love it. I just felt it would really resonate with how the story's told, the content of the story. And so [given] my relationship with Kareem and the play, it was just natural to move it into the festival.

Obviously, every piece that goes into the festival is a piece I love, by a playwright I want to support. Part of what I love about my job is that I get to create opportunities, I get to pair the creative teams, I get to introduce playwrights to directors sometimes, or honor pre-existing relationships. But I can't do them all, so it's always hard to give one up! [laughs]

I imagine - because they're kind of your babies in a way.

They really are. So I make sure that they're in good hands.

You've got a such a cool-sounding title as Director of New Works. I mean, what theatre professional wouldn't want that job? I'm sure it's not all just fun and games, though. What's the most challenging aspect of the role?

I think one of the most challenging parts is saying "no" to people, for reasons that make no sense except for you have limited resources, you're creating an entire season, [etc.]. There are so many reasons why you do a play, and why you may not do a play, in a specific moment.

It seems to me that in your role you have a lot of power. Does it feel that way to you?

Uh, no - but now that you've said it, I might get drunk on my power! [laughs] It's more like an awesome responsibility and an awesome opportunity. I'm always aware that I'm providing opportunity and how hard it is in this business to get those opportunities. I try to be very conscious of that.

Which is one of the reasons we created the "New Works Next Generation" programming [in collaboration with Stanford University], to make sure we were truly looking at rising artists in the field and see if we could support them and give them an opportunity to work in a professional theater. And it's the lifeblood of an organization, the conversations that are happening across college campuses, high schools. These are the people who are creating the future, so finding a way to let our audience have a multi-generational conversation is important and fascinating to me.

And this year we continue that with As Soon As Impossible, which is Betty Shamieh's play [in the festival]. Samer Al-Saber, who is director of that piece, is a professor at Stanford in the Department of Theatre & Performance Studies and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. He reached out early in the pandemic, and quite a few months ago we put together a mini-festival of plays that dealt with race, ethnicity and identity, and it was wonderful. The actors and directors were all students, and it was just truly inspiring to do these plays with these students, and then have the conversation. When we were talking about that, Samer had already committed to a project with Betty Shamieh, who is a playwright I have adored for so long - I just think she's really a stunning, bold, funny writer. When I heard they were working together and that they wanted to do some development work, I was beyond thrilled to be able to offer them a space in the festival. It's a lovely mix of professional actors and students, so the conversation continues.

Hopefully, we've all learned a lot about diversity, equity and inclusion over the past year. How has what you've learned affected the way you approached this year's festival?

You know, I've been very lucky that my career has been with multicultural projects and playwrights from diverse backgrounds. That's the foundation of my career.

Exactly! Which is why I was curious to ask you this question. Because you're not new to these efforts.

Even though I'm not new to them, the amount we have all learned in the past year, because of the brave artists who stepped forward and said, "No, take a hard look at yourselves. Take a hard look at this industry and take a hard look at the contributions you're making or the harm you're doing." One of the things I've been so proud of over the past year is how TheatreWorks has engaged in this conversation. Planning the festival, one of my partners at TheatreWorks is Jeffrey Lo, who is our casting director, a Filipino-American artist. We have always had an eye toward inclusivity and diversity, and even with that, we realized there was more we could do, more opportunities to create.

So tell me - what is the "more" you could do?

I think the "more" is that ... You know, I grew up in a time in this business when if there was one woman directing in a season, people went "Oh, they have a woman!" So there's often been this attitude of "What is enough?" One woman is not representative of the theatre. So really it's honestly casting that wide net. A lot of the festival artists have been with us for a while, but I will say the difference was a deep engagement, a deep invitation to community conversations, to making sure we are serving BIPOC artists equitably.

You're having a Kickoff Event for the festival on Friday, April 23rd. What will that encompass?

I'm so excited about the Kickoff Event because it's a celebration of our commissioned artists and the future of theatre. Coming out of the pandemic, we all wanted at TheatreWorks to really talk about hope and the future of theatre, which I think is strong. I think we've learned the value of a shared story, how you can make profound change when you share a story. So I looked at our commissioned artists and thought, "I want everyone to know what's on the horizon so they can be as excited as I am." We're basically going to introduce all the artists, present a song from each of the musicals in development, and then introduce the writers who are writing plays.

I'm happy to see some musicals on the slate! They often get left out because they are more expensive to produce.

We decided that we would not try and present a completed musical online. It places, I think, a financial burden to make sure you're executing the musical [to its full potential]. So we really decided to celebrate pieces in process. I'm so excited by having the Bay Area Theatre Cypher join us for their Currency, which is really an examination of the themes in The Merchant of Venice through rap, hip hop, poetry. It's so beautiful and we have a wonderful interview from Dan Wolf, who conceived of the idea, and director Sean San José [who is incidentally the newly appointed Artistic Director of Magic Theatre]. It's an extended interview because I was so fascinated by the process and what they're doing. Tackling Merchant of Venice is never easy [laughs] so the "why" behind that exploration, I think really can help people become excited about not only these artists, but what it is they're doing with their art, the conversations they're having through their art.

I saw that you were recently inducted into University of Nevada, Las Vegas [UNLV] Hall of Fame. Congratulations on that!

Thank you so much. Yeah, it was nice!

How did your experience at UNLV help prepare you for the career that you now have?

Well, I was born and raised in Las Vegas, and one of the beautiful things about Las Vegas is it's the town of "yes" in all ways, even some that are probably illegal. [laughs] I mean, I think it's why Cirque du Soleil found a home here. I grew up seeing shows that were a lot of feathers, with volcanoes erupting and set pieces moving and a love of spectacle. So I never say "no."

I read crazy new plays and say, "We can figure out how to make this happen onstage." Because anything can happen when you engage people's imaginations. You can truly tell any story; you just have to figure it out. At the UNLV theatre department, we had a wonderful technical director who taught us a lot about the making of theatre. So I always knew that it was hard work, that it was a collaborative process that took an entire team. I think that helped because I was an actor, and sometimes actors aren't actually aware of everything that happens [around them].

A festival like is such a huge undertaking with so many moving parts. Given that it ends on Saturday, May 15th - so what will you likely be doing on Sunday, May 16th?

[laughs] Collapsing! Well, I will be fully vaccinated and I'm having a massage. That is my treat to myself.