Excerpts from NT’s interview with ANW co-founder and co-artistic director Julia Rodriguez-Elliottt on the theater company’s new season and its plans — more than a decade in the making — to move to a permanent home next year

Let’s start with the new season. Broadly speaking, what’s your general impression of 2010-2011?
To a certain extent, some of the choices we made in terms of the season really have to do with our own personal journey as an organization. Thematically, we’re calling this season “The Heart of the Matter: Finding the essence of eternity in a changing world.” For us, it was really looking at, although there’s this great deal of change for us as an organization, the center of who we are will remain unchanged. A Noise Within will be the same A Noise Within that everyone has come to know, just we’re going to be in a new environment. That was what began to drive some of the plays that we began to look at — how a number of characters deal with change. Of course, that’s a fairly broad thing, in the sense that most of great drama is about that, but for some of the plays we looked at, you see a lot of the central characters dealing with change and how that impacts who and what they are.

Is there a particular play that specifically relates to that theme?
I think “Great Expectations” in a way is probably the one that’s closest to that. Pip has this great ambition and these great expectations about what it is he wants to do. There’s the essence of this wonderful young man who goes through this journey and is presented with all kinds of different opportunities, gets somewhat lost along the way, and then returns to the essence of who he is by the end of the play, having learned some hard lessons.

Personally, I’m most excited about “Measure for Measure.” Can you tell us anything about A Noise Within’s interpretation of the play and why you chose to kick off the season with it?
I happen to love the play, so I think that’s one of the reasons we wanted to revisit it. This play can be set anywhere, any time, and it’s relevant. But in the context of dealing with change, I’m fascinated by the character of Isabella, who is the presumed hero in the play. How her world is really rocked by the events of the play is really fascinating to me, because often people follow her journey as, “Oh, she’s such a moral person,” but she’s someone who’s pretty stuck in a particular way of thinking and is dealing in black and white, and the world is so gray. 

You’re directing the Ionesco piece [“The Chairs”]. Does absurdist drama hold some particular interest for you?
Yes it does. I love this play, and I’ve been wanting to do it for quite some time. You know how you read plays in different times in your life and they strike you [differently]? The older you get, the more you start to understand these things. [Laughs] For some reason, when I looked at it again this year, I was just so fascinated by the life that these two people have built with each other and some of the decisions that they’re making along the way. I just love the theatricality of the play, especially if you’ve got two really fabulous actors in the roles. I think it’s such a wonderful journey for the audience, besides some of the big-ticket items that the play deals with — which I’m not sure I always understood.

What’s the right mindset going into a play like this? Should you be out to understand it, or do you just let it unfold before you and decide what it means afterward?
I think people come in with a lot of different mindsets. For me personally, I feel like it’s always best to come in and let it wash over you. It’s like with Shakespeare, where sometimes people come in and feel that if they can’t understand every word, somehow they’re missing out on something, rather than letting the plays wash over them. These great plays are going to take you on a journey whether you like it or not, so I always think it’s best to just give yourself over to it.

Now for ANW’s move to a permanent home in Pasadena next year. This has obviously been a long time in the making — 18 years, right?
I guess you could say. [Laughs] Eighteen years in the making since we started. 

When you first started out, was this move always in the back of your mind, or was this something that came about more recently?
When we first started, it was truly an experiment. We had no idea. Most people told us we would fail. They thought, “You’re in L.A., this is a film-and-television town. People are not interested in theater, much less Shakespeare.” It was very gloom and doom. For us, it was, “This work is very meaningful to us,” and we thought, “Well, let’s see if there’s an interest out there.” So it was really a bit of an experiment, that first production, as were probably the subsequent two productions we did after it. It was only after our first two-play repertory that we thought, “Wow, there’s something here. It seems like we’ve struck a chord with the community, it seems like there’s a need.” Then we really began to think about really organizing the company. We’ve been here [in Glendale] on borrowed time all these years. The owners of this building have been extraordinarily generous patrons of the theater. The building is privately owned, so for us we always knew that down the road we had a need to identify a permanent home for the organization. It’s an evolution. You’re not necessarily thinking about it the first five years, but you’re thinking about the future of the organization. We always wanted to create something that was going to have a lasting impact, be here for future generations. That has been part of the journey for the last 10, 12 years.

What’s it like to finally be able to talk about these plans and know that they’re actually happening?
It’s very exciting, there’s no question about it. These are economically very challenging times, so the fact that the organization has indeed been able to get to this point I think speaks to the power of the kind of material and the work that we do and the depth of the support. We have just incredible patrons that have really helped us during what are very challenging economic times. And we’re not done — because we still have money to raise! [Laughs]

Will productions in the new venue be a little more — for lack of a better word — elaborate?
It opens up the opportunity for having a lot more artistic options in the new venue. I think part of who we are is that the story and the actors are central. Scenically, we try to be provocative and evocative rather than representational. It’s always a spare, bold and classy approach to design.

Do you think there’s still an audience — a young audience — for classical theater?
I think there’s still an audience for them because I see it in terms of how our student audiences connect to the work. Once people come and they have the experience, it’s no longer museum theater for them. I think that sometimes there can be that kind of perception. Part of our job is to keep the work relevant and accessible to a modern audience, so that people find that these plays — because they are, certainly the themes that they’re dealing with — are as relevant as a play written in 2010.

Have you noticed any trends in theatergoing over the past nearly two decades?
Certainly, I think overall there’s the challenge of competing with a lot of different opportunities out there, whether it’s the Internet, whether it’s videos. You’re always competing with other entertainment. I know a lot of organizations struggle to attract a younger audience. That is not so much an issue for us because inherently our programs are about bringing students in. If you come to A Noise Within at any given performance, you’ll always see a student audience fully integrated with the adult audience. I’m always amazed how these audiences connect with the material and the relevance to their own lives. It’s not necessarily happening for them in the classroom, but boy, the minute they see this material — and I think that’s the key — live, I’m always amazed at the connections that young audiences make.

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