Dana Iannuzzi
Interview Highlights
Reach out to people you’re curious about. Many times, they will want to help you.
As artists, it is our job to help people navigate the human experience.
You can be both strong and kind as a leader.
Being an artist is part of who you are. It is not who you are.
Find Dana Online:
Website: https://www.danaiannuzzi.com/
Dana’s Current and Upcoming Work:
SuperHero - Houses on the Moon Theater Company - opens April 12, 2022
On Your Feet - John W. Engeman Theatre in Northport, LI - opens July 14, 2022
Freedom Summer - August 2022 workshop at Watertower Theatre in Dallas/Fort Worth
Bio
Dana A. Iannuzzi (she/her) is a New York based Actor/Director. She received a BA in Theatre Arts Performance Studies from Muhlenberg College. Favorite Acting Credits: (TV/Film) The Leftovers (HBO), Guiding Light (CBS), The Taming (Bianca), Havana Nocturne (Workshop w. Warren Carlyle), Favorite Directing Credits: Cursed: The Musical (Virtual Event), tenderly (Virtual Event), Freedom Summer (BWMT/NYMF) Beehive: The 60s Musical, Steel Magnolias, A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline (Timberlake Playhouse).
“I think it is important, no matter where you are in your career, to reach back and pull somebody forward.”
Dana’s Creative Journey
Amy: We are here with the wonderful multi-hatted Dana Iannuzzi! Please introduce yourself, share your pronouns, and tell us about what you do in the theatrical space.
Dana: My name is Dana Iannuzzi, I use she/her pronouns. I’m an actor and director based out of New York City.
Hayley: Dana, can you tell us how you came to your creative work?
Dana: Growing up, my parents played show tunes in the car all the time. I knew “Fugue for Tinhorns” before I knew the alphabet. My parents took me to a show, and I thought, you can do that for a living? Let’s do it!
The first show my parents took me to was The Music Man. But my favorite show of all time, the show that I think is the perfect show – fight me! – is A Chorus Line. That was in 1985, when Donna McKechnie came back to the show after doing it in Japan. My parents say that when they started playing the intro to “One,” when the lights came back up, my face was like the sun had shone. I still feel that way, that song makes me cry every time I hear it. A Chorus Line is the show that changed my life.
I’d always appreciated theatre, but as I went through school, people started saying, “You should go look at drama camps. You should go to college for theatre.” I thought, go to college to become an actor? Is this how you do it? I fought it for a really long time. I didn't apply to any conservatory programs, but I applied to Muhlenberg College, which had, and still has, a great theatre program. I went to school to be an actor, but being a director has been "tripping up stairs" for me.
Hayley: Did you always know that directing was a part of it for you?
Dana: No! I graduated from college and came back to New York, and I wasn’t working a lot. In 2010, I met Paul Stancato, and he cast me in a NYMF show. Then he asked me to play the mother in a reading of a new musical about Jean-Michele Basquiat, whose mother was Puerto Rican.
One night we went to dinner, and I said, “We both know that you are going to recast this role with someone who is more age-appropriate. But I love the show - how can I stick with it?” At this point, I had done a whole bunch of research, and I’d become the second foremost expert in the room about Basquiat and his life. So Paul said, “I’ll make you my associate.” I was like, “Great, what does that mean?”
It started out with, “Read this script, let me know what you think.” And then, “I’m going to go check out this new play,” and then, “What do you think about this staging? What would you do differently?” It kind of organically happened. He was teaching me, but I was also doing it inherently. That’s how the directing thing happened. I’ve been flying solo now for four or five years. And I continue to be an associate from time to time.
Amy: When you say flying solo, do you mean directing? Acting? All of it?
Dana: In 2019, I was doing both directing and acting, compartmentalizing. The pandemic forced us all to be introspective and think about where we are and what we want to do. I had a come to Jesus moment, and I’ve decided that performing is going on the back burner. If something comes up, I will do it. But I want to focus more on directing. It’s kind of great to be a female director at the moment. The shift in theatre culture is slowly happening. It sort of feels like the turntables in Groundhog Day, it sometimes works and it sometimes doesn’t.
Amy: (laughing) What a topical reference!
Dana: A lot more opportunities come my way as a director at the moment. You have to listen to the universe when it sends you things.
Thoughts on Directing and Acting
Hayley: For our readers who may not be familiar, can you please tell us about the differences between an assistant director, an associate director, and a resident director?
Dana: An assistant director is usually an early career director. Someone who has directed in a very small capacity, and they do a lot of the paperwork. They deal with stage management, scheduling, they take notes for the director and the creative team, they are the facilitator of all of the behind-the-scenes things. They don’t have much creative input. Occasionally they do, but they are really there to assist the director with anything they need, and it’s not always in a creative capacity.
An associate director is someone who has a lot of creative input. They understand the director’s vision and plan, and they are able to articulate and execute the plan. They are like the voice of the director when the director is not in the room. They deal with all design and creative departments, and if the director is in a meeting, they will run the rehearsal. On Broadway, the associate usually maintains the show and deals with stage management. In large-scale productions and tours, the director leaves once the show is up. So an associate will put new people in the show, note the show, and deal with any problems.
A resident director is a little higher above that. They are someone who stays with the show for long-running shows, like Wicked, Lion King, Phantom of the Opera. The director and associates are gone. The resident director stays and maintains the show. They do all the same things an associate would. That’s the Reader’s Digest version of those roles.
Hayley: So you sort of skipped the assistant step?
Dana: I did! I jumped a step, certainly with certain people. I’d like to think it’s because I was further along developmentally. Just sitting in the room and taking notes was not enough. I still do that, I just did a show as an assistant director. I’m a little too opinionated though, and I know that.
I have told many young directors to reach out to someone who is doing work you are passionate about and ask them if they need an assistant. That is the best way to put your best foot forward. I feel this way about actors too. I want to work with somebody I know, like, and trust. If you are already in the room, and someone says “I can’t do this right now, can you take it?” What a great position to be in. At the very least, being a sponge and listening is great.
In 2017, I reached out to Amy Morton, who is an ensemble member at Steppenwolf. She’s the mom in Rookie of the Year. I really admire her work, and I had seen that she was doing an all-female version of Glengarry Glen Ross that was coming to Broadway. So I hand-wrote her a note and sent it to Steppenwolf. I said, “I hear you are coming to town. If you ever need an assistant, I would love to speak to you.”
At the time, people were telling me that I had to pick a lane, that I couldn’t do both acting and directing. I wrestle with that because I just don’t believe that’s true. I think you have to compartmentalize - I can’t direct a show and be in it at the same time. But I don’t see why you have to choose one when they both feed each other.
In the spring of 2018, I had an email from Amy Morton. She said, “I want to let you know that the people who tell you that you have to make a choice are people who had to make a choice themselves. Just because they had to, it doesn’t mean you do.”
Then she said, “The following people have had the opportunity to act and direct at the same time. They didn’t have to make a choice. If you can sing, dance, and act – why can’t you direct? It’s just another skill.” Then she rattled off names like Orson Welles, Greta Gerwig, Robert Redford. It had never occurred to me to think about it that way.
So, I took a laissez-faire attitude. All I want to do is reach out to somebody and ask a question. What’s the worst thing that could happen? I would never hear from them again? Reach out to that person if you are curious about their career path. Nine times out of ten, people want to talk about how they got here and be a resource to other people. It doesn’t always have to yield a job. Sometimes it’s just advice, advice is free.
Dana’s Creative Work and Creative Mission
Hayley: Can you tell us what you are working on creatively?
Dana: So many things! I just finished a workshop of Rock and Roll Man: The Story of Alan Freed. I was the assistant director. We staged Act One and did Act Two as a reading, so we gave an idea of what the show could look like, which was really fun. I start rehearsals soon for an Off-Broadway play called SuperHero by Ian Eaton, which is being produced by a small theatre company called Houses on the Moon. I’m also an adjunct professor at Muhlenberg College, and we are in the middle of showcase season.
This summer, I'll be directing On Your Feet at the John W. Engeman Theatre in Northport, Long Island. Then in the fall, I’m directing Murder for Two at Greenbrier Valley Theatre in West Virginia. And then development-wise, Amy and I are working on a project that is embryonic right now, but we are excited about it! The other thing I’m working on, which is a passion project, is a new musical called Freedom Summer. It’s about the Freedom Summer murders of 1964. We are doing a workshop of that at Watertower Theatre in Dallas/Fort Worth in August.
Amy: You are so busy!
Dana: It sounds more impressive than it is.
Amy: Or maybe it’s actually impressive.
Dana: We see ourselves differently than other people do. For me, all of these are things I’ve been working on and striving toward, so they feel self-evident. Other people are like, “Wow, you’re doing so much!” And social media is not reality. There’s a lot of work behind the scenes that we don’t really see. So thank you for the compliment, but it doesn’t feel as busy as I guess I am.
Amy: I think it’s important to celebrate and acknowledge all the things we’re doing. It’s something I personally struggle with.
Dana: Similarly, I’ll give you both your flowers for this project. There are a lot of organizations that claim to give women in theatre their voice and enable us to talk and say who we are and what we’re doing, but some of it is really performative…I think speaking to women of ALL demographics and career paths is great. Yes, we want to hear from our Stromans and Diane Pauluses, but I also want to hear from the person who is about to pop. I think it’s important for us to talk about all stories. I want to hear from the designer who just finished their first Broadway show and how they got there and how excited they are. I give you both a lot of props for creating something like this.
Hayley: Thank you! Everyone has a different way of achieving what they achieve and this career path can be very elusive, so it’s really important to us to shed light on it.
Dana: If we were doctors or lawyers or CPAs, there’s a path for that. There is no path for this. That’s why I use the tripping up stairs metaphor.
Hayley: There is this story that there are steps and a logical route to this career path. If you get a BFA degree from this place, and you do this and that, you’ll be successful. But it’s not reality at all. If you talk to anyone in this industry, they could tell you that. Every person has a different story.
Dana: I really think the best thing that has ever happened to me was not working. Because I still had to find a way to be creative.
Hayley: Dana, tell us about your creative mission.
Dana: I always like to be the expert on a particular subject. I have such a thirst for knowledge because I really want to get the story right. I want you to see a show that I have worked on and continue to think about it. A month from now, a year from now, I want you to remember it. Whether it’s something that made you comfortable or something that made you uncomfortable, I want us to observe the human experience as something outside of ourselves. I want to evoke thought and change in my work.
One of my favorite quotes, by documentary filmmaker Roxana Walker-Canton, is about unsettling yourself –
“I challenge you to unsettle yourself. Today, I’m calling on all of you to unsettle yourselves. I’ve learned that the so-called comfort zone is where nothing gets done. Comfort breeds complacency, and complacency feeds the lazy. Ask the tough questions, explore the cobwebbed corners, and get off the couch.”
We are trying to show the human experience. It’s not always pretty, and there is comedy in tragedy and tragedy in comedy. It is our job to navigate that and help people see things in ways that they don’t necessarily think they should see them.
Thoughts on Womanhood and Mentorship
Amy: Dana, how does womanhood fit into your identity?
Dana: It’s interesting, I’ve always seen myself as a tomboy. But I think I’m actually not. I think I’m actually a really girly person. The way my womanhood fits into all of this is…I identify as a woman, I have feminine qualities to me…but I’ve watched women in our industry feel like they have to be mean or strong to get what they want done. I don’t think I fit into either category, I think I do both. I can approach it from an emotional side of things, but I can be as much of a “dude” as I want to be.
One of my male mentors said to me, “In order to control a room, you have to be tough and scare people.” I don’t agree. I don’t believe in leading with fear. I think there are ways to be yourself and be kind and supportive. To be a director, you are really the room’s psychologist. And you have to be that way because everybody works differently. I think I straddle that line pretty well. There are ways to embrace your femininity and still have a strong voice in the room.
Hayley: I’ve been looking for the words for that for a while. There is a lot of pressure that I feel as a woman director to fall into one of those extremes. The women that I admire most are able to be vulnerable and also be a badass in the room. It’s inspiring to hear you talk about that.
Dana, please tell us about some of your influential mentors.
Dana: All three of my mentors – Paul Stancato, Warren Adams, and Victoria Bussert – have inspired something different in me. And working with each of them came out of an email, text message, or running into somebody and sitting down to chat.
Now, as a mentor to a few young women, I think about what each of them requires of me. That sounds like an ugly way of saying it. “This person needs tough love, this person needs me to lift them up…” Mentorship is a lot of fun because when they succeed, I feel like I’ve succeeded. The other part is having somebody who can help you get to the next step of your career.
I think it is important, no matter where you are in your career, to reach back and pull somebody forward, because that’s what happened for you. I have had that happen to me. It’s important in general in our industry, but it’s really important for women. We are put in a lot of boxes because of our gender, how we physically present ourselves, how big or small we allow ourselves to be in rooms. It is so helpful to have someone who is seemingly unafraid of being who they are, who says, “Follow me, this way, you got this.” It’s been quite a joy for me to do that for young women.
Benefits and Limitations of Gender
Hayley: How do you feel that your gender has limited you, and how has it benefited you?
Dana: As an actor, there are almost always more women than men. We are always going to lose our power that way. I’m half Puerto Rican and half Italian, and I’ve spent most of my acting career chasing Daphne Rubin-Vega and Karen Olivo’s careers. Walking into a room where there are twenty women who look like you - it could go either way.
On the directing side, there have only been ten women who have won Tony awards, and the first woman didn’t win one until 1998. That’s somehow shocking to people. It’s a boys’ club you don’t expect because we are such an inclusive community…but if you were to name any Broadway show right now, nine times out of ten, it’s directed by a cis white man. The female directors out there who have come up have macheted the way through and made a path for the rest of us. But it’s still a very narrow path. All the female directors who have won Tonys are cis white women. There has yet to be a Black, Asian, or Hispanic female director to do that.
Rachel Chavkin said in her Tony acceptance speech, “It’s not a pipeline issue. It is a failure of imagination by a field whose job it is to imagine the way the world could be.” Just because you don’t see them, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Camille A. Brown is a great example - she is so close to breaking that glass ceiling for herself and for the rest of us. Unfortunately, most times people are gonna go with people they know…and most of the people they know are white men. It can be very difficult to be heard in those rooms. Sometimes you have to take a chance on the unknown person.
How to Improve the Theatre Industry
Amy: If you could wave a magic wand to make the theatre industry better, what would you do?
Dana: I think the people who hold the purse strings are not representative of the people who need to see our work. Producers - or people who are allowed to be producers - are a very specific 1% demographic that only want to see their stories represented. It’s not that I don’t think we need revivals or big flashy musicals. But the stories that are getting through the pipeline need to change. The people who hold the purse strings are way too safe. They want the sure thing.
Amy: That’s also a function of how prohibitively expensive theatre has gotten.
Dana: Absolutely. At the same time, there are ways to do it much smaller. Certain shows shouldn’t be in certain theatres.
Final Thoughts
Amy: Dana, what are you most proud of in your life?
Dana: I am most proud of the fact that I have always been a person first. Far too often, I have listened to peers say, “I can’t go on vacation, I can’t go to a wedding, I can’t see my family” because work might arrive. There are gonna be days when you need to sit on your couch until 2AM doing your taxes. There are gonna be days where you need to turn off the noise and go plant a garden. If you are unable to take that time and perspective and allow yourself to be a person, you’ve missed life.
Our job as artists is to show the human experience. If you are only showing your very narrow purview of it, you are sort of missing it. You are going to regret the things you’ve missed. I’ve missed Thanksgivings and Christmases. But it’s the times that I’ve been able to be present that are better. I’ve missed some auditions. I’ve probably missed some opportunities. But I’ve lived my life! It’s important to always remember being an actor, being a director, is part of who I am. It is not who I am.
In my career, I’m most proud of the fact that every time I’ve been knocked down, I’ve gotten back up. My first semester of college, my acting professor took me aside and said, “Dana, do you want to do this as a career?” I’m thinking this woman is about to tell me I’m the best thing since sliced bread. Instead, she says, “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
I was twenty years old. Acting I. She told me this and I was devastated. It has been my life’s mission to prove her wrong. When someone tells me I can’t do something, it is 100% my life’s ambition to prove them wrong. It’s the no’s that have spurred me on to find my yes. I am most proud of my very thick skin and my tenacity.
Hayley: Thank you so much Dana, this has been amazing.
