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TheatreWorks Silicon Valley announced on Thursday, July 6, that Artistic Director Tim Bond will be stepping down this month to join the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as its new Artistic Director. TheatreWorks’ Artistic Associate and Director of New Works, Giovanna Sardelli, will become the company’s Interim Artistic Director, stepping into the role on July 14.
“We are grateful to Tim Bond, who took the helm at TheatreWorks in March 2020, and was immediately subsumed by the pandemic. He spent the next three years keeping the company together, artistically, emotionally, spiritually. Under his leadership we presented exciting virtual productions for our audiences while our stages were dark. …. When TheatreWorks finally resumed mainstage productions, Tim wowed our audiences with a stunning array of award-winning productions, not the least of which was his brilliant staging of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. We cannot thank Tim enough for his contributions and wish him well in his next adventure,” incoming TheatreWorks Board Chair Mark Greenstein and outgoing Board Chair Holly Ward said in a press release announcing TheatreWorks’ change in leadership.
Sardelli has worked for over 15 years with TheatreWorks, and in addition to her long association with the company, is a nationally known director. Her numerous credits include collaborations on new works with Tony Award winner Mathew Lopez (“The Inheritance”) and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph – both playwrights who have debuted shows at TheatreWorks. Sardelli has helmed productions in New York and throughout the U.S., including at respected organizations such as The Mark Taper Forum and Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, Houston’s Alley Theatre and New York’s Atlantic Theater Company, according to the press release.
With the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Bond will be rejoining a company with which he has a long affiliation, having previously served for 11 years as the Ashland, Oregon-based company’s Associate Artistic Director.
“It is with a heavy heart that I leave the TheatreWorks community that I have come to know and love, that has embraced me and my work. I had hoped to serve here longer, continuing to expand the legacy of founder Robert Kelley. But my former artistic home has asked if I can return to support it during a critical period, and I am compelled to return there,” Bond said in the press release.
Audiences can catch Sardelli’s work on TheatreWorks’ stage next month, as the company’s 20th anniversary New Works Festival is set to showcase new plays and a musical, Aug. 11-20 at Palo Alto’s Lucie Stern Theatre. The festival kicks off with a dinner and conversation with playwrights David Henry Hwang and Rajiv Joseph.
Bond will be back during TheatreWorks’ 2023-24 season to direct August Wilson’s “How I Learned What I Learned,” slated to open in January 2024. He knew Wilson and is considered one of the top interpreters of works by the celebrated late playwright.
