2012/2013 Season

Biloxi Blues

Neil Simon

May 4-27, 2012
Sylvia

by A. R. Gurney

June 28-July 15, 2012
The Colored Museum

George C. Wolfe

October 2012
Holiday Cabaret

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November 2012
MOMologues 2 - Off to School

Lisa Rafferty

January 31-February 17, 2013
Circle Mirror Transformation

Annie Baker

March 2013
Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

May 2013
How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Karen Zacarias based on the acclaimed novel by Julia Alvarez

June 20-July 7, 2013

SEASON FLEX PASS
6 Punch - $130 !

Anna's Interview

With New Home Opening Soon, Stageworks Theatre Founder Anna Brennen Looks Back And Forward

Some undisclosed number of years ago a little desert coyote, a cowgirl from Nevada, realized she was a bit different from her friends and neighbors. She loved the ranch, the roundups, the whole Wild West zeitgeist, same as they did, but for her, there was something more dramatic theatrical even about it. She seized that drama, fused it with her soul, and set forth on a journey that would take her across the pond to Europe and back, before landing her in Tampa in 1979. Here, Anna Brennen took a lifetime of experience, achievement, social consciousness and, above all, artistic commitment and turned it into the well-known Stageworks Theatre Company, which will celebrate three decades of passionate, powerful art with the opening of its first permanent home in a sparkling new million-dollar facility in the Channel District Aug. 12th.

Anna left the ranch as a teen to attend private school in Tacoma, WA and became a globetrotter. She lived with her brother in Berkeley, CA. as the Bay Area became a center of culture and change. She studied theater at Carnegie Mellon and later the University of California-Berkeley. She married, was soon a mother, and soon after that packed her family's bags for a two-year stint in London. There, in a move befitting her feisty nature, she tracked down Sir Laurence Olivier and simply asked to be his personal assistant. He agreed, and for the next two years she had entree into the upper echelon of London theatre, absorbing everything she could from the parade of stellar actors, directors and producers she encountered on a regular basis.

Anna moved to New York when her husband got a teaching position at Vassar. While she worked part-time and raised a daughter, she stalked Manhattan with the same tenacity she had shown from her early days on the ranch, when she'd coerced Basque sheepherders' kids into helping her stage productions in their basement. She studied, auditioned, took any role she could get, worked as a stage manager, directed when she could and wrote as much as possible (she still considers playwriting/directing to be her first loves). She immersed herself in New York theater, and 11 years there were her finishing school. She came to Tampa in 1979 as a single mother, ready to give up theater and instead work two jobs to take care of her daughter. One phone call drew her into Tampa's then-nascent theater scene, and she has ever since been one of the major social consciences of this area's theater community.

With the new Stageworks Theatre almost completed, Anna sat down recently for a series of interviews with Tampa-based journalist Chip Carter (Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, AOL) to reflect on a lifetime of commitment and the permanent legacy she has created:

Q: Some people say you are the heart of Tampa theater. Do you sense that?

ANNA: I'm the survivor of Tampa theater the sole survivor. I've seen five other professional companies come and go on. Across the bridge there's American Stage, they started several years before Stageworks. Stageworks and American are really the survivors.

Q: When were you first drawn to directing?

ANNA: Directing is something always wanted to do but I was discouraged from it, constantly. People would say, Anna, they don't hire women directors, you need to be an actress or a costumer very few women were even stage managers then, though I was that, I learned to do that. I knew I couldn't sew. I could stage manage and run lights and sound, I learned those things. But I began directing plays in my basement as a child, then in high school and at UCAL-Berkeley. I just did it. I did it -- I wanted to do it so I did it. Does that make sense?

Q: And for 30 years now you've been the dean of Tampa Bay directors in a town where theater is not the easiest avenue to make one's way...

ANNA: Dean, hardly. A frequent director here, yes, and had our share of compliments from the press and community, yes. Perhaps my skill is really administrative. I have an enormous number of administrative skills I've acquired by training myself over the years. I'm not a lighting designer, I'm not a sound designer, I don't design sets, I'm not a costume designer, I'm not a makeup artist I've done those things, but I'm not those things. I never liked being an actress. It was always painful because I knew what it took, how hard you had to work you listen to the really great actors talk and you understand how much work they do. I understood and I asked that of myself and it was extremely enervating, time-consuming, demoralizing, hard work. What I wanted to do was write and direct. So I don't know what I am. I'm a good producer, I would think, and sometimes a good director, given the appropriate script. If I have to put a label on me I just think I'm a theater maven. I'm just somebody who loves world class theater. It's passionate, it's powerful, it's joyful and it can transform people, change people's opinions, minds and ideas. Good and great theater reminds us of our universal connection, our humanity. As they say, each generation must learn anew, and theater is one of the very best teaching tools.

Q: It must have been murder when you had to leave New York.

ANNA: I wound up here because I couldn't properly take care of my daughter in New York, she wasn't safe. When I left New York the only thing that kept my soul alive was I knew I could keep writing my plays and I did. And I gave that up again, stupidly probably, to devote myself solely to keeping the theater alive here.

Q: How did that come about?

ANNA: I fell into the whole business of theater here because a woman who knew about me from New York called me up and said, 'There's a theater group and they're going to die and they need somebody to help them.' To me that had been a lifetime ago. But I had all this wonderful training and experience. They yanked me back into the theater world.

Q: You've never been bashful about speaking your mind, have you? Anyone who's ever worked with you, like myself, is well aware.

ANNA: I am an outspoken person; I've been fighting in the trenches so long. Truth based on experience and wisdom is the commodity most valuable in both the arts and in life. It's your understanding, your sharing, passing it forward, if you will, that creates fine theater and a good life, for everyone involved.People often say, Tell us what you really think, Anna and I say I always do, why don't you? You won't like what I have to say. Hypocrites are dangerous.Everyone has opinions, and if kept to themselves, that creates more problems. Critical discussions and analysis are what foster learning, development, again, in art as well as in life.

Q: Tampa was not a cultural center at that time it was all cigars, orange juice and old people. How did Stageworks survive and thrive?

ANNA: I knew what mistakes other theaters made, there were key financial decisions that were fatal for them and I didn't make those. Stageworks didn't move into real estate we couldn't afford or had no agreement with; we didn't go Equity when we couldn't afford it and we didn't expand our season beyond what we could afford at any given time. I just saw what needed to happen. We became a gypsy theater, we had no space and we would travel, we moved a lot, where ever we could go, nine major venues, including seven years at the Falk Theater, ten years at the Straz/TBPCA in the Jaeb and recently the Shimberg. However, that was immaterial; I knew -- know -- theater is about the work, not the space. About the caliber of the work and serving the community. Theater is an actor, anywhere, speaking to someone from their heart. A candle, the sun or the moon will do

Q: And now Stageworks finally has a permanent home. That must be gratifying. When you see the new theater, do you think, I did that. That's mine?

ANNA: It has nothing to do with me it has everything to do with my love of theater and why it's so powerful. Having a new home gives you a space where people can look to show themselves to themselves and share feelings that are often scary or foreboding and say, Oh gee, there's somebody else like me. That's me. Or, Gee I wish I could be like that isn't that exquisite? The space permits, allows, encourages, demands all of the above: That you use theater to show humanity to itself. That's the unique power, the soul of a theater. People constantly remind me, 'Stageworks is you and you are Stageworks' and I tell them that is absolutely not true. I had a vision, and Stageworks has had teams of artists, staff, a board, hundreds of sponsors and donors. We can't do any of it without teamwork from the community at large.Look at [Board President] Andrea Graham, she is raising the money and supervising the Stageworks space being built, because she believes in its mission. I guess I would say we have survived. We always felt that what we stood for, our mission and what we were doing was important: to serve the underserved, the underdogs, the minorities. So in a way I did with theater here in Tampa what I did for my daughter I put what I really love the most on hold to build something needed and useful, meaningful, with what I loved and knew had lasting value.

Q: And in so doing have you ultimately found fulfillment?

ANNA: When I was going through all the posters to make sure I had one from every Stageworks play to alternate on the walls at the new space, I suddenly realized how much Stageworks has done. And it was mindboggling. There are over 120 mainstage plays alone. That's a lot. There's an incredible body of work there. It's overwhelming. When I look at it, I weep. It was so hard. It's been the road less travelled. One late evening recently, when I was sitting at the computer, I happened to whirl around and see all of the posters, cleaned, lined up and stacked, and I thought, What is all this worth? What value is there here? Thousands of artists and audience members have been touched, moved, caused to experience and perhaps to change, reconsider.

And then everybody keeps saying to me, What do you feel Anna, what do you think, this is yours and I say, No, it is not mine. Stageworks is for the community, this is a stage where we canraise awareness of minority issues, where we raise money to help our at-risk children, this will be a safe haven for the people whose voices are not always heard, who need to hear themselves, and for the voices that are not heard so others are challenged to listen. Theater isn't about a space, it's not about a place, it's about the mission, the vision and the work. You can do it anywhere. But you have to have a place to work in, that's true, and over time it becomes more cost-efficient to have your own to solidify and ensure it endures.There will always be people who need their stories told, their voices heard. And the other part of it is, I don't think it's hit me yet I'll believe it when it's there. But I will tell you this: when I walked through the stage left side doors, and looked up at the catwalk and into the sound booth, when just the silver struts were everywhere, it took my breath away. I knew that was going to become a theater that catwalk told me so. And it was an absolute chillbumps moment, I was Chill Wills riding a bomb I was so excited about that catwalk. It spoke theater. And the risers, just the struts of the risers were in but you could see the skeleton of a theater and that to me was like looking at a dinosaur, but it wasn't and it was. It was ancient in its stature and it was a theater and I chuckled. It made me smile. I was happy because it was a theater. It wasn't mine. It was a theater and it was spare, but it was there. And it was so beautiful. I looked up and there were people walking along the catwalk; it was just lovely. I waved at them up there. There was something theatrical and divine about that. I went upstairs to the control room and stood in what would be the window -- there's something about standing in the wings looking up at the catwalk and standing in that control booth and looking down at the stage and over the audience and you just know: There's magic to do!