Today we’d like to introduce you to Adriana Rossetto.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’m a multi-hyphenated and international artist. I was born in Mexico from Brazilian parents, I lived in Germany until I was three and then moved to Italy where I spent the majority of my life. At 17, I did an exchange year in Texas at the end of which I headed north to New York to spend the summer. I fell in love with the Big City and came back to it at 22 to study at the Stella Adler Acting Conservatory after finishing Bocconi University in Milan, where I earned a Bachelor in International Economics Management and Finance with a thesis on the management of the experimental theatre.
As you might imagine from my roaming, I have spent my life exploring themes of immigration, diversity, and inclusion as that was ultimately my personal experience. I became passionate about social justice, and coming in contact with so many cultures, I fell in love with storytelling and the human experience: I became aware of different walks of life that contextualized my place in the world (my privileges, my flaws, my talent, etc.) in a way that felt global and fueled my eternal curiosity. “Otherness” is a recurrent theme in my thoughts, both as someone who experiences otherness and seeks to belong, and as someone who loves and accepts diversity and thinks that our differences are in fact our most powerful attributes.
I’m a theatre artist as this is the art form that brings me in the middle of people, and I’m searching for ways to bring empathetic human contact at the center of my theatre-making, in a way that transcends the actor-audience relation.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The immigrant experience is always a controversial one: it means different things for different people and the context in which it happens makes it unique from person to person, so it’s important not to generalize or make blunt all-inclusive statements because it dehumanizes the personal aspect in which these experiences happen. Like all great things in life, being an immigrant for half of my life, and being the daughter of immigrants for the other, has been both magnificent and terrible. On one side it has given me perspective as I’ve experienced a greater portion of the world directly on my skin, have made incredible friends with which I have shared unique adventures and growth have contacts and “homes” all over the place. In general, this has made me more attentive and non-judgmental, I think that in general situations are never black or white, and giving a name to different shades of grey has been important for me. On the other hand, moving so much and saying goodbye to such rich experiences and friendships every time has made me more aloof and self-reliant. I’m often looking for belonging in a way that is not silencing important parts of my identity just to “fit in.”
Please tell us about The Private Theatre.
I’m the director of development of The Private Theatre, a diverse group of artists committed to raw, intimate and startling productions of classical, contemporary and devised work. We are at the forefront of creating theatre that amplifies a wide range of perspectives and voices that we feel are more representative of the world we live in. The Private Theatre was founded in 1980 by Artistic Director John Gould Rubin with the intent of revolutionizing the aesthetic of American Theatre and rebel against a stultified and overly commercial theatrical scene. Over almost four decades, different configurations of adventurous members have brought The Private Theatre’s mission to life, honing in on the idea that deeper collaborations yield greater creative freedom. Most recently, The Private Theatre has run Rocco Chelsea Adriana Sean Claudia Gianna Alex on the mainstage theatre at HERE Arts Center (February-March 2019). Rocco Chelsea [et all] was the culminating production of a 6 year developmental process that involved 45 contributors among original writing, designing and devising: we define this theatrical event as “installation theatre”, a play in which the storytelling is brought forward by the interaction of actors and audience members, designers and space, all having the same weight in creating the dramaturgical experience of the piece. Rocco Chelsea served 653 audience members over 14 performances. Prior to Rocco Chelsea, The Private Theatre co-produced Turn Me Loose, a play about comic genius Dick Gregory, featuring Joe Morton. This much bigger production toured the country from The Westside Theatre (NYC – 2016) to The Wallis Annenberg Center (LA -2017) to Arena Stage (DC-2018) serving an outstanding 57,800 audience members across sold-out runs in these venues.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I think I would have done all of it just the same, but I still have some takeaways that I’d like to address in the future. My main focus for this year and what we’re battling for as a company is creating greater sustainability for early-career artists and small producing organizations in the Broadway world. Having an eye for the economic side of the artistic business, we are searching for grass root methods that keep our scale of business afloat. Organizing and producing theatre is becoming more and more challenging because of the lack of funding and the privatization of capital, and because theatre is inherently unsustainable, lacking corporate logics of economies of scale and scope. It is fundamental for us to retain the multi-hyphenated pool of talents and diversity we have cultivated during the years and leverage on our ongoing learning curve. Independent art is tough but fundamental: we feel that unbiased artistic products bring forward the narrative for the better all-inclusive world we are helping to shape along with the community of artistic excellence we are a part of.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.adrianarossetto.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rossetto.adriana
Image Credit:
the photographers are Paolo Burinato, Jared Carlisle, Max Gordon, Hunter Canning, Emil Rivera, Kate Enman, Mark Bennington
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