One of the most produced plays in the country is coming to the Bay Area this week. “King James,” written by Pulitzer-nominated Rajiv Joseph, will make its regional premiere at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. The show opens on Oct. 12, with previews Oct. 10-11 and will run through Nov. 3.
Named after basketball champion LeBron James, the play hinges on the friendship between two superfans, who find their social sweet spot in their common love for James.
“Sport is the container; friendship — cross-cultural, cross-racial friendship — is at the heart of it,” said Giovanna Sardelli, director of the play, in an interview with this publication.
She is also the artistic director of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, a role that brought her from New York to Palo Alto last year. Previously, Sardelli was a freelance director who ran a program for new plays at TheatreWorks. Lest the newfound administrative heavy-lifting deplete her, she tries to creatively collaborate with living playwrights as much as she can.
Her professional relationship with Joseph goes back around 20 years. In fact, Sardelli directed Joseph’s very first production, “Huck & Holden,” back in 2006 and has since directed over 10 plays written by him, including “The North Pool,” “Animals Out of Paper,” “Describe The Night,” “Guards at the Taj” and “Archduke,” to name a few.
From “Huck & Holden” then to “King James” now, the writer-director duo sure has come a long way. “When we first started working together, I said to him ‘I don’t understand your style, you repeat things and I think maybe you do it too much’,” she reminisced. “And he looked at me and said ‘Trust me, it works’. And I thought he’s cocky. But we read it in front of an audience and he was right. In that moment I learned something. He was confident and still curious and open to ideas and thoughts…”
She particularly admires the way Joseph’s plays teeter on human foibles and observes that over the years his writing has become “more sophisticated, more daring, more rich.”
Their relationship has become richer over the years too. Today, by her own admission, it is near-familial. “We have a very brother-sister relationship now, which is very funny but which also means we squabble, we’re so comfortable with each other,” she said. But it wasn’t always like that. “Early on in our careers, I was very deferential; the director is hired by the playwright… and I was taught that I am in service of the playwright. And then after doing two or three of his plays, I started to assert myself a little more, partly in challenging him with ‘What are you trying to do and how am I helping you?’ That comfort was slow to evolve.”
And evolve it did. Over the years, her own approach while directing his work has moved from a place of “guts and instinct and hope and prayer” to the firm ground of sound craft where she knows exactly how to steer the audience toward the desired emotion.
As for “King James,” Sardelli first watched it being performed a couple years ago at the The Mark Taper Forum at Los Angeles, along with a few other people from TheatreWorks.
“I went with Christopher Fitzer, who is our properties director and who is also designing the sets and costumes for the show,” she said. The play is loosely structured around a basketball game and has four quarters. “By the end of the first quarter Chris and I looked at each other and said ‘We’ve got to do this play.’ My first impression was just how moved I was, how invested I was in the lives of these two young men trying to figure their way in the world…”
Sardelli believes it takes an actor of unusual skill and courage to do justice to Joseph’s writing and characterization. “Rajiv is mischievous. Rajiv’s language is deceptive; it can look so much simpler on the page but when you realize the depth of what he is doing and of what is actually happening, you have to be like an athlete — you have to be willing to be so vulnerable, so bold, you have to let us laugh at you because human beings are nothing if not awkward and messy,” she said. “So you have to have an intense craft but you also also have to allow for this messy humanity that is very exposing… and that takes a very special person.”
Despite its focus on basketball, Sardelli feels “King James” is a play that appeals to a broad spectrum and is confident that people who don’t follow the sport will eventually find their way to the jokes.
“It’s fraught, it’s funny, it’s uncomfortably human, it’s delightful,” she said. “To me that’s the hallmark of a great play, of a great night in the theater.”
“King James” runs Oct. 11-Nov. 3 at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets are $34-$115. theatreworks.org.
