What Our Directors Say About IVP’s First Virtual Festival

International Voices in 2020

What Our Directors Say About IVP’s First Virtual Festival

By Zoe Rose Kriegler-Wenk

As Patrizia Acerra, Founder and Executive Director of International Voices Project, thinks back to the first readings IVP ever produced, an anticipatory smile crosses her lips. She remembers standing outside the theatre hoping she had done enough to attract a Chiago audience to a new festival of international plays. Ten years later, Acerra has similar butterflies for a different reason: “I feel like we're starting over again. It feels like a brand new festival.” With the global health crisis necessitating a shift to a virtual performance space, IVP 2020 faced a plethora of artistic challenges. Fortunately, Acerra has spent a decade honing and cultivating the mission of the company, and speaks with clarity and passion about the importance of this year’s festival:

We take risks. We push boundaries. We're not afraid to have conversations. We’ll warn audiences that we're going to have that conversation, but we really want to have meaningful urgent work on stage that speaks to the moment. We've always been that way as a company. The experience of it may be different, the format of Zoom versus in person, but we're still presenting that dynamic, engaging, provocative work.

All nine directors participating in IVP 2020 agree that the festival has the potential to make an essential impact in the virtual realm.  Iraida Tapias, director of Jauría, applauds IVP for adapting to the times: “It is the commitment that is important.” Nicole Hand, director of Take The Rubbish Out, Sasha, is excited about the potential for engaging a broader audience: “People from all over the country, all over the world, can tune in. I think that's lovely.” Anna Bahow, director of All Adventurous Women Do, echos Hand’s sentiment, saying “Patrizia has created this opportunity for us to hear voices from around the world.” This resonates with Acerra’s vision for a virtual festival: “[The] biggest shift is that our global work gets to be seen by global audiences. [...] Now we really can open it up to anyone who wants to see it. And for the directors, the directors can work with any actor they want, anywhere.” 

IVP’s directors are drawn to the unique opportunity that the festival provides to share stories and spark cross-cultural dialogue. Josiah Davis, director of Decomposed Theatre, has always been interested in international pieces, and has noticed that “the performances that stick with [him] the most actually aren't in English.” Warner Crocker, director of Testosterone and a long-time participant in IVP, agrees:

One of the reasons I got into theatre to begin with, as a young person, is that I got to explore worlds that I had no idea what they were. And IVP is one of those theatrical experiences for me; where I get to taste stories from other cultures, other places, other people that I wouldn't really have the experience to take a look at. [...] And that's one of the things that I think is extremely exciting about what the International Voices Project offers, and it's one of the reasons I keep coming back every year.

Iraida Tapias speaks to the importance of listening to voices from countries outside the United States and fostering connections with international playwrights, and is interested in seeing multiple perspectives on global themes such as immigration and abuse of power. Breahan Pautsch speaks passionately about “shedding light on things that are happening that we might not know about that can affect people in a deep way. So it's a really beautiful and wonderful way to create international dialogue.” Nicole Hand speaks to the importance of  broadening the dialogue in the American theatre landscape and sees IVP as a thrilling opportunity to continue that conversation with a “dynamic, exciting group of people.” Anna Bahow sums up the importance of the festival in context of our contemporary political climate:

IVP offers us stories that are essential for us to understand each other, ourselves, and our shared humanity, and that's really important to remember in a time where we have not been as inclusive as we could be. [...] Theater is having a reckoning, as is the rest of the United States, in terms of representation and honoring and making room for BIPOC artists. It’s really, really crucial and that gives us the opportunity to bring more stories, important stories, into the world that might not have always had a voice.

International Voices Project 2020 is now streaming virtually every Wednesday at 7PM through October 21st. Our season includes plays from Spain, Ukraine, Serbia, Germany, Romania, Finland, Egypt and Canada. We - IVP’s directors, actors, playwrights, translators and production team - are grateful for your support and warmly invite you to join us (FREE admission/donation requested) in championing and uplifting international voices.