Interview: Giovanna Sardelli Steps up to Lead TheatreWorks Silicon Valley at a Challenging Juncture and Directs MRS. CHRISTIE to Open Their 2023/24 Season

Sometimes the best person for the job really can be found right in your own backyard. When Giovanna Sardelli was announced as the new Artistic Director of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley shortly after her predecessor Tim Bond’s departure, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought, “Well, that’s a no-brainer!” Sardelli had already been Artistic Associate and Director of New Works for the Tony-winning company for a number of years and is well-known and highly respected in both the local and national theater scenes, having directed plays throughout the Bay Area and across the country.

Trained as an actor at NYU’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts, Sardelli transitioned to directing and quickly became a favorite collaborator of soon-to-be-prominent playwrights like Matthew López (Tony Award winner for The Inheritance) and Rajiv Joseph (Pulitzer Prize finalist for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo). She is also known for her incredibly eclectic taste in theater and ability to connect with colleagues and audiences. As TheatreWork's top box-office draw Hershey Felder said to me recently about Sardelli, “She’s a kind and smart person. I’m glad she was given the opportunity because she deserves it."

I spoke with Sardelli several weeks ago, shortly after the company had issued a wakeup call in the form of its “Save TheatreWorks Now” campaign to raise $3 million to ensure its 2023/24 season would be able proceed as planned. I’m sure no incoming artistic director would relish beginning their tenure that way, but Sardelli has been rightly lauded for her openness in acknowledging the challenges she inherited and facing them head on. In our conversation, Sardelli was her customary upbeat yet pragmatic self as we talked about her immediate priorities in tackling her new job, an early role model of hers named Zelda Fichandler (widely regarded as the matriarch of American regional theater), why she is drawn to storytellers, and what she loves about Mrs. Christie, the play she serendipitously signed on to helm months ago, not knowing at the time it would turn out to be TheatreWorks’ first production under her artistic directorship.

It should be noted that while TheatreWorks recently announced they have raised $2.5 million to date, they are still in need of additional donations to meet their critical $3 million goal. The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.

First off, congratulations on being appointed Theatreworks’ new Artistic Director!

Thank you! I am really excited about it, even with everything going on.

When you signed on for the job, you must have known you would be leading an organization that was experiencing a significant financial shortfall, right?

Yes!

Did you have any hesitancy in taking the job?

No. As Tim [Bond] left to go help OSS [Oregon Shakespeare Theater] which is in a similar condition – you could argue worse - I realized we had to hit the ground running, and probably in this moment I was best-suited for the job because I could hit the ground running. I love this company, I really do, so I thought, “Well, this is a moment to give it everything I have.” To just literally hit the ground running. I keep using that phrase, but that’s what it feels like. And I’m a terrible runner so this has been the most exercise I’ve had in ages! [laughs]

But it was going to be daunting for whoever took on the task, and I love the team we have. We have a new executive director and development director, Debbie Chinn and Aaron Nicholson, and they are so amazing that I looked around the room and thought “If anyone can do it, we can.” The whole staff here – we are the people who can do this, so let’s just go, let’s just try.

Do you know yet if your full season will go on as announced?

Yes, our plan is to have it happen. We might have to make little adjustments here and there, but that’s the intention we’re working towards. Part of the issue with every theater in America has been the instability. If you say to the people who support you, who’ve subscribed, who’ve funded you, “This is what we’re going to do.” and then you end up changing or cancelling, that doesn’t breed confidence.

I think people are very understanding because it’s clearly not one theater’s mismanagement, it is an industry collapse - and an industry of clever, inventive people who are going to re-examine the model, help each other out, and discover what works now, in this climate. We’ll do what we’ve done for centuries, which is figure it out.

As a sign of the dire situation theaters are in all across the country, I think the real shot across the bow was the venerable Mark Taper Forum’s announcement last June that they would simply cancel all productions for an entire year.

Yeah, it’s the giants. We’re all used to smaller companies who kind of fade away or didn’t make it but had a great run. But now you’re looking at OSS, you’re looking at the Taper, you’re looking at BAM and The Public Theatre, and that’s what’s really frightening in this moment. America in a different time might have the bandwidth to look at this and say, “This is a cultural collapse, this is actually a crisis.” But [these days it’s like] we’ll just add it to the list of things that need to be addressed right now.

You seem to be especially comfortable collaborating with playwrights to develop their work. Where do you think that comes from?

I come from a family of storytellers. My dad is Italian from Brazil, came to this country not speaking English, and was an entertainer. I watched him travel around the world and connect with audiences through song and stories, so from a very young age I have witnessed the power of the storyteller – the people who can connect us, make us feel safe, make us feel seen and heard, make us laugh. I’ve always loved and valued the storytellers.

I went to school to be an actress and it was so lucky that I ended up at NYU’s grad acting program with Zelda Fichandler and Ron Van Lieu. I mean Zelda Fichandler - just talk about a leader of theater! At NYU even though we were there to learn how to act, we were there to learn to tell stories. We didn’t have an ideology we followed so you didn’t learn a way to act. What you learned was to meet the story, see what was required of you and go into your toolkit and figure it out, to tell the story through many different ways. My favorite thing to do is read a play and ask, “What is required of me to facilitate the telling of this story?” rather than just “How am I going to do it?” It’s a different approach, it’s a different way in.

What’s going to be Job 1 for you as Artistic Director of TheatreWorks?

Omigosh, there is no “Job 1.” That is the beauty of running a theater - every day is like five jobs. I am directing the first show of our season, Mrs. Christie. It’s such a wonderful murder mystery about Agatha Christie and her disappearance, and it’s really fun and sexy. I love this play so much. So that will be part of my Job 1, launching our season. As we’re asking our community to come out and support us, they need to see what it is that we do so well and understand why we’re valuable, why we deserve their support. So that’s important, number one, making the art.

My other Job 1 is to connect or reconnect with donors. During the pandemic we lost, as did many theaters, I think a third of our subscribers. So we’re reaching out to people to see why they’re not coming back, would they come back, and finding out how we can re-engage with them. That’s a huge part of my job, especially as we’re doing this financial campaign, just supporting Debbie and Aaron in any way I can. Because if people want to give, I think they want to know what I plan to do. I’m happy to tell anyone about my future plans.

Another job is looking at the core principles of TheatreWorks, like our commitment to arts education and meaningful engagement. There’s a real interest in restarting some of our education programs, and this goes way back for me. When I became a professional director some years ago, I had to give up my job at NYU where I was a teacher in Tisch School of the Arts. I loved teaching and that was the hardest thing to walk away from. So now I look at this as a moment where we can really rebuild our education department. I want to do adult education because that’s my specialty, but I love people who can teach young kids theater games. I can’t do that, but I’m really good with adults!

I’m especially looking forward to seeing Mrs. Christie. My grandmother had every Agatha Christie novel ever published so I grew up around stacks and stacks of her books and read most of them at some point.

It’s such a stunning play. [Playwright] Heidi Armbruster loves Agatha Christie and murder mysteries, too, but this is a contemporary twist on it of somebody much like herself who relies on Agatha Christie to help her make sense of the world, and then they go on a journey together in an interesting way. Different timelines, different worlds, but using Mrs. Christie to make sense of her own life and then therefore helping us make sense of somebody like Agatha Christie. It’s a celebration of female friendship and women who are ahead of their time deciding to become who they are meant to become. It’s really powerful and funny. I keep saying to people “It’s not your grandmother’s Agatha Christie, but she’ll like it as much as you will!”

---

Mrs. Christie runs through Sunday, October 29, 2023 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro Street, Mountain View, CA. For tickets and more information, visit TheatreWorks.org or call (877)-662-8978.

Test and expand your Broadway knowledge with our new game - The Broadway Match-Up! How well do you know your Broadway casting trivia?	Play the Daily Game, explore current shows, and delve into past decades like the 2000s, 80s, and the Golden Age. Challenge your friends and see where you rank!
How well do you know your Tony Awards history? Take our never-ending quiz of nominations and winner history and challenge your friends.	Can you beat your friends? Play today’s daily Broadway word game, featuring a new theatrically inspired word or phrase every day!