- Saviana Stanescu
You’re Invited to
NYMadness!
with Guest Playwright
SAVIANA STANESCU
SAVIANA STANESCU
Monday, May 20th at 8pm!
at Urban Stages
259 West 30th Street
(Between 7th and 8th Ave)
Please find a fantastic interview with Featured Guest Playwright Saviana Stanescu below-
1. What has it meant to you to be an immigrant playwright and how does that affect your work?
I am a Romanian-born playwright with Balkan roots. Back in Romania I used to write surreal and absurd plays and create interdisciplinary performances. Here in the USA (after completing an MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU, Tisch, as well as a MA in Performance Studies) I became concerned with issues of identity and immigration, content-wise, and with character development and innovative dramatic structure, form-wise. At this point I work on integrating my 12-year American experience and newly developed craft with my (b)old Balkan inventiveness and imagination, while tackling meaningful/global issues.
In my American plays I explore topics of displacement and reinvention, of cultural clashes and power dynamics between countries, groups and individuals.
I am interested in that inbetween space where migrants dwell, living in the “hyphen” between two cultures or communities. That hyphenated/hybrid identity fascinates me. I’m always ready to analyze and dramatize ways in which the American Dream turns into a nightmare for many people while remaining an idealized Paradise for others.
And of course I’m generally curious about OUTSIDERS 
Outsiders as un/documented aliens, global foreigners, nerds, disoriented/misunderstood teens, loners, rebels, revolutionaries, or just regular people who felt like an “outsider” at some point in their lives. The need to belong/conform versus the need to rebel/stand out. For whatever reasons, any person’s mind could become a battlefield for those two needs at any given moment. That internal conflict is a rich theatrical mine. In a few of my plays (Waxing West, Aliens with extraordinary skills, etc) I dramatize that inner dialogue.
With: KALON HAYWARD, NICOLE VENTURA, SIMONE BOUFFARD, CARLOS HARRIS, PATRICK DOOLEY, LANI HARMS, AKILAH WALKER, DANA WALSH.
Photos by Gerry Goodstein.
With: KALON HAYWARD, NICOLE VENTURA, SIMONE BOUFFARD, CARLOS HARRIS, PATRICK DOOLEY, LANI HARMS, AKILAH WALKER, DANA WALSH.
Photos by Gerry Goodstein.
2. What do you love about being an artist in New York City that keeps you here year and after year?
Theatre has historically proved to be a powerful tool for social change, inter-ethnic dialogue and cross-cultural awareness. NYC, with its very diverse population, is the perfect “playground” for such endeavors. It is a lively microcosm of the global world.
However when people think of theatre in NYC, they mostly think “Broadway”.
Broadway and the glittering commercial success are just shiny dreams that artists indulge in from time to time. Nothing harmful in that. But what really matters is that NYC is still the perfect place for new work, for innovation, creation and inspiration. Especially for us, playwrights. I couldn’t find such a high energy and excitement for discovering/developing/producing new plays anywhere else.
3 Many of us Emerging Artists look up to you, but I know you’ve paid your dues and then some so what do find frustrating about being a Well Established Mid-Career Playwright that we Emerging Artists can start getting ready to handle?
Well, if you read “Outrageous Fortune. The Life and Times of the New American Play” written by Todd London with Ben Pesner and Zannie Giraud Voss, you know what I’m talking about. It’s hard for us, playwrights, to make a decent living from our plays. People need to write for TV and film, to teach, to have other jobs that pay the bills. We would all want to just live as artists, making a good living from our creative work.
As a mid-career playwright things get a little trickier. There are many grants and fellowships (not enough but hey) and developmental opportunities for emerging playwrights, but not too many for mid-career artists who tend to be forgotten exactly when they need recognition the most. When they feel that they’ve worked very hard, sacrificed many things just to get work done, they have an impressive CV and deserve a much needed stability. Financial, creative, emotional. That’s when the middle-age crisis kicks in, dramatizing scenarios in the playwrights’ head: What have you done with your life? Was it worth it? Plus, for me, as an international playwright who came to the US in her early 30s and started to write in English, things are a little more complicated. I have pushed myself all these past years (12) to write in a more nuanced, sophisticated, poetic, witty English, to feel the characters’ words, moods, dreams. To inhabit the English language. I feel that I achieved that, my US-produced plays prove it. I’m a Romanian-American playwright now, I guess. Not many people see the intense struggle hidden in that hyphen, but hey, they’re not supposed too. I don’t like to expose my scars I am a person full of joie de vivre, as the French say, joy for life. My plays are meant to facilitate a better understanding of our shared humanity. Even when I explore dark issues/characters, I hope to make the audiences feel deep and think about this beautiful thing called life.
Grant Neale (Ceausescu), Marnye Young (Daniela) and Alexis McGuinness (Elena Ceausescu) – photo by Scott Eastman
With: William Carden, Jennifer Dorr-White, Walter Masterson, Amir Arison, Florin Penisoara, Jessica Warner, Shawn-Coulin Young
4. How do you balance being a teacher and a writer? What’s most inspiring about being a teacher?
I like to teach and I think I’m a good teacher. I care about my students and I want to see them succeed. I try to inspire them to push their limits, to search for their authentic voice, to be curious about the global artistic world.
This has been my first year teaching full-time, thanks to a tenure-track position in the Theatre Arts Department at Ithaca College. Before that I taught part-time at NYU, Tisch, and occasionally at Strasberg Institute, ESPA, Primary Stages, etc.
It’s been very demanding, with a 7-course teaching load and many other committee& advisement meetings, but also very rewarding as I got to work closer with the IC students and contribute to their growth in a more consistent and hopefully meaningful way.
Kevin Isola and Natalia Payne – photos by Carol Rosegg
5. What are your upcoming projects?
I am developing a project called ENSLAVED, about human traffic, with director Tamilla Woodard.
We got a TCG grant to develop a new play with songs at EST, with Colombian director Perdo Salazar (this coming June).
The one-man-show that I wrote “Polanski Polanski”, starring Grant Neale, will have a longer run in September-October (We had a workshop production at HERE last year).
My new play USELESS will have a few more staged readings and workshops in the US, UK, Romania and France. I’m preparing it for a production in 2014.
My new play USELESS will have a few more staged readings and workshops in the US, UK, Romania and France. I’m preparing it for a production in 2014.
ANTS, produced by NJ Rep, will be published by Samuel French.
Final Countdown (Cuenta Regresiva), translated by Boris Schoemann, will be published by Paso De Gato, in Mexico City, after a long run there.
At Ithaca College I’m developing with my students a project called BACK TO ITHACA. A CONTEMPORARY ODYSSEY. They interviewed Ithaca veterans, we have 13 monologues at this point, and will develop them theatrically towards a production at IC in the fall, that I will also direct. I’m happy to do more directing and devised-theatre work. Creative renewal
And I have a few other “mysterious” projects that I don’t want to talk about yet. Dramatic suspense…
For more information about Saviana’s upcoming works and more be sure to visit her website at: www.saviana.com
