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Daena Giardella:
Daring to Bare Essentials

by Celena Sky


Daena Giardella has created and internationally performed numerous solo and collaborative theatre pieces. During the 1980s, she performed her original works, including The Swan Soliloquy, Mabud and Friends, and Yes to Everything!, throughout the Boston area. In July 1990, she was invited to perform Yes to Everything! at the Susan Delal Center for Dance and Theatre in Israel. She decided to stay there and spent the next year and a half performing and teaching, while living in Tel Aviv. After returning to, the United States, Giardella created Moment to Moment, which she performed for seven weeks at the Beacon HUI Playhouse in Boston.

Giardella’s work is wildly hilarious one-minute and deeply introspective the next. She performs like a tightrope walker without a net. I had the pleasure of seeing Giardella’s newest show, Bare Essentials, last spring when it enjoyed many sold out performances at the Dance Complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following the performance, I spoke with her about the show, which is beginning a second run-with new material–on October 14 at the same venue.

Giardella’s performance is inspired by the art of improvisation. For the past seventeen years, she has been investigating the creation of theatrical performance forms that incorporate both scripted aspects and spontaneous text and choreography.

“I have been guided in part by the muses of jazz improvisation, where basic musical themes become the departure points for countless creative variations,” Giardella explains. “Similarly, in Bare Essentials, there is a set dramatic ‘spine,’ with recurring themes and islands of departure, that provides a framework for the improvisational material, which changes night to night. While there are certain elements (characters, issues, inovement phrases) that are always pre present, no two performances are ever the same. ‘Theatrical- jazz’ engages the endless. for choices. I know. possibilities where I am going in the overall vision of the piece, but how I get there and whom I meet along the way are deliciously changeable wild cards each evening.

Bare Essentials, Giardella says, “is about coming home. It' s about coming home to ourselves, to what really matters, to our bare essentials.” We follow the life of Rita Callibrani, a self-described recovering serial monogamist who is trying to figure out how to five alone. Rita has spent the last five years separating from her ex-lover Paula, with whom she had a nine-month relationship. In the opening moment, we meet quickwitted Rita, a ‘90s woman who leaves her nine-to-five cubicle job and comes home to her beloved and hated answering machine. The night I saw the show, Rita literally crawled into her apartment. When she dropped the groceries and tampons flew everywhere, the audience roared with the laughter of recognition at a truly “bad hair day.” Rita confided to the audience: movement phrases) that are always present, no two performances are ever the same. ‘Theatrical, jazz’ engages the endless possibiltities for choices. I know where I am going in the overall vision of the piece, but how I get there and whom I meet along the way arc deliciously changeable wild cards each evening.

Bare Essentials, Giardella says, “is about coming home. It’s about coming home to ourselves, to what really matters, to our bare essentials.” We follow the life of Rita Callibrani, a self-described recovering serial monogamist who is trying to figure out how to live alone. Rita has spent the last five years separating from her ex-lover Paula, with whom she had a nine-month relationship. In the opening moment, we meet quickwitted Rita, a ‘90s woman who leaves her nine-to-five cubicle job and comes home to her beloved and hated answering machine. The night I saw the show, Rita literally crawled into her apartment. When she dropped the groceries and tampons flew everywhere, the audience roared with the laughter of recognition at a truly “bad hair day.” Rita confided to the audience: “Never under any circumstances should anyone spend one last night with a former ]over in order to have one Of those closure-processing rituals. They’re deadly, A person could die from too much processing.”.

Interested in the spontaneous creation of character, Giardella thrills the audience with an electrifying gallery of characters who transform unpredictably as they reflect the many faces of being human. She portrays not only Rita, but Rita’s friends, family, former lovers, and inner child. ‘Mere is teenager Bobby, the inner-city boy who is filled with heart and scared of the gun he feels he should carry; Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan; Wild Woman; Rita’s friend Franny; ex-lover Paula; Morn; and many more. Giardella use of an extension phone and hold button as the battleground for Rita’s inner selves is priceless.

Sometimes Giardella draws upon her observations of people in her own life to create characters. One example is the character Franny, Rita’s closest friend, who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Franny is based on Giardella’s friend Francis, whose death had a profound impact on her. Giardella describes her experience of Francis’s dying as “one of the most seminal experiences of my life. Francis was an actor/therapist. Once diagnosed with AIDS, he gathered a group around him for the process. He asked me to videotape interviews with him during his last months, where he discussed his experiences living and dying. He was in a state of peace before he died. I was one of four people there with him. It was very inspiring. I will never have the same relationship with death.

“So the character Franny gestated in me for two years. Then, while I was performing in Israel, I began to develop her. It was well received. Franny began to speak to me and began to evolve. I knew I had to change the gender. Franny is very different from the actual person, Francis. What’s the same is her passionate belief that dying is just another aspect of living. I wanted Rita to have a solid relationship with a good friend.”

Rita works as a temp. She hates it. She hates faxing, she hates word processing, and she really hates her cubicle. She says, “I’ve been a temp for seven years–there seems to be some contradiction in that, “ Then again she has an interesting perspective on temping: “ Everybody’s a temp, and we’re all trying to find peace with that state.

Giardella is a terrific actress, comedian, and dancer. I asked her why she chose improvisation as her form.

She told me that improvisation is the last surviving remnant of the original impulse of theatre, which came from the need in the earliest human beings to grapple with the meaning of life. “These early humans,” she says, “created rituals, enactments, cave paintings, dances, and songs to tell their stories and to communicate their feelings, confusions, and beliefs. Improvisation replicates this ritual dimension of that early impulse, where the audience is part of the event and there is that sense of the unexpected, the unknown, creating the moment anew.” This original spirit of improvisation, coming from the need in individuals to see their conflicts and dreams reflected in a shared collective community experience, is what inspires Giardella.

Improvisation allows the audience members to participate in the creation of a performance, even if they are not consciously aware they are doing so. Giardella sometimes speaks directly with individuals, in her audience, but, at other times, she simply senses what people are thinking and feeling: “I hope that my characters mirror something that is meaningful or potentially healing for the audience. Since I delve into difficult subjects, I try to do it with a lot of humor".

Bare Essentials is not, however, “improv” in the traditional sense. It’s not performance art; it’s theatre. But there’s a difference. Most theatre is passive; the audience just consumes a prefab experience. Giardella engages the souls of her audience, using their responses actually to transform her characters. A character, she explains, is like “a basket in which I collect impulses, choices around a certain theme. Eventually, the character takes on a full life. The audience is like a wild card that adds new dimensions to the character’s life each evening.”

More than any other kind of performance, improvisation pushes the actor to be in the moment. But, for Giardella being in the moment is, about more than just acting: “My whole work has been helping people to be in the moment. A sacred awareness of the moment, to enter the moment, to let go of the moment.” Her last production wag called Moment to Moment, a piece inspired by living in Israel during the Gulf War. “SCUD missiles were falling around the comer from me in Tel Aviv. I went through a threshold of terror and on the other side was a true appreciation of what it means-to live moment to moment,” she says.

Giardella obviously cares deeply about spiritual growth and healing. I asked her, did. she also see her work as political?

“Feminism is in my blood,” she told me. “The experience that the personal is political-this revelation is the great contribution of feminism.

“Any of the personal. experiences and limitations of my characters-Rita’s confusion about love, her inner child needing to be loved, and not getting what she needs from Rita, Franny’s dealing with dying-all this has a political context. Because of the way. we’re conditioned-the homophobia, the lack of the acceptance that would allow us to enter a place of understanding, love and true honesty in our relationships-all of that oppression leads to psychological confusion.” That confusion, Giardella believes, is the root of most of our political problems: “The way we’re treated as children in our families directly affects the way we act in the world. For example I think it’s incredible political oppression that so many people are raised to hate their bodies because this impacts directly on their freedom and self-confidence and, therefore, their ability to question what is happening around them.”

The character Franny is very political in this respect. “Franny,” Giardella says, “is a teacher for me because ,She points out the rigidity, the limitations of Western views of death, of life, Nobody teaches us how to die. Nobody really teaches us how to be with people who are dying or that life can prepare us for death. That feels very political to me, the suppression of that truth.

“When something truly resonates with that kind of truth, people feel mobilized internally to act, to change. That is- very dangerous politicaly. That’s the most revolutionary thing that can happen in a culture. A good example is the AIDS epidemic For many of us, the epidemic has catalyzed us to learn to die consciously. This has tremendous political impact.”

We act in the world. for example I think, it’s an incredible political oppression that so many people are raised to hate their bodies because this impacts directly on their freedom and self-confidence and, therefore, their ability to question what is happening around them.”

The character Franny is very political in this respect. “Franny,” Giardella says, “is a teacher for me because she, points out the rigidity, the limitations of Western views of death, of life. Nobody teaches us how to die. Nobody really teaches us how to be with people who are dying or that life can prepare us for death. That feels very political to me, the suppression of that truth.

“When something truly resonates with that kind of truth, people feel mobilized internally to act, to change. That is very dangerous politically. That’s the most revolutionary thing that can happen in a culture. A good example is the AIDS epidemic. For many of us, the epidemic has catalyzed us to learn to die consciously. This has tremendous political impact.”

Politics enters into Giardella’s work on another level as well. She reads at least two newspapers a day and listens to the news. If she doesn’t know what’s going on all over the world, she feels claustrophobic. Giardella, keeps herself steeped in world events, and she uses all this material in her shows. For example, in the new production of Bare Essentials, she uses the recent O.J. Si son media circus to raise issues about violence against women.

Giardella is a dancer as well as an actress, and music and movement are as important as words to Bare Essentials. The music is fabulous. Keyboardist Alizon Lissance, who was in the band Girls Night Out, uses improvisation to compose the rhythm & blues tunes that accompany each performance. Giardella believes that one reason she and lissance work well together is that “we were born on the same day. There is phenomenal chemistry, a lot of nonverbal, intuitive connection.”

Giardella’s movement is authentic, visceral, potent-she drums with her body. When I ask her about this, Giardella says, “Yes. I think of it as an energy place very connected to the heartbeat. There is a place of wild abandon in the best sense of the word ‘wild.’ That’s where the Wild Woman character in the show came from. She is one of my favorites because she is so alive, and it is so satisfying not to have to put a lid on my passion"

“It’s wild, alive, pure lust for life-this is where I feel most comfortable hanging out. People always ask if I am exhausted at the end of the show-I never am more awake and alive as when I am performing. It’s much more exhausting to limit myself, to have all these impulses and not have anywhere to put them.”

In the end, Giardella says, her work is really about storytelling.- “I believe what heals people is the telling of our story over and over again, to someone who is listening with true love and compassion. And this is what I am doing with the audience. I’m trying to tell our collective stories through the characters.”

What is important to Giardella is to get at the contradictions that. are intrinsic to being human. She wants to surprise the audience (and herself) with revelations about characters that no one expects-for example, Franny’s sassy and irreverent sense of humor about dying. More importantly, she explains, “the contradictions we feel within us are what cause us so much pain. We accept certain parts of ourselves but feel ashamed or rejecting of other parts. When we find out that other people have the same shadow feelings-of wanting to seek revenge, of self-hatred, of being lonely-we begin to accept ourselves. I feel that one of our deepest needs as individuals and as a society is to be able to truly love ourselves. There. is great sacredness and poignancy in each of our struggles. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being human.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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