Giacoma Bonello will be wearing two hats in our December production of It’s My Brooklyn, Too! She is directing and also playing the role of Faye, the daughter who insists she was poppa’s favorite (you can imagine how her sisters and brother react to that).
Gia is Brooklyn born and raised and also the daughter of Italian immigrants, so she relates to this story of first generation Italian-Americans seeking acceptance in an often immigrant-hostile United States.
Here, we ask he about her acting career.
1 How and why did you get into acting?
My first brush with performing was through dance. I really enjoyed being on stage, dressing up, and making people laugh. There was no doubt in my mind that it was all I wanted to do, but growing up in my family/community, I didn’t know how I could build a life as an actor. I was fortunate enough to live in a school district with excellent theater programs and received a lot of support from my teachers, Christina DeClara at I.S. 201, and William J. Coulter at Fort Hamilton High School. Bill, who is a surrogate father to me and who produced my last play, was the person who said, “You’re talented enough to make a living doing this.”
2. If you could play any character in any play or movie, who would you pick and why?
It’s a tie between Serafina Delle Rose in Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo and Amanda in Noel Coward’s Private Lives. Serafina is an amalgamation of many of the Sicilian women I know and grew up around and who I’ve always been afraid of becoming; I think embodying her on stage could be really helpful to me in my life. Amanda is the opposite – she’s so British and guarded, but she feels very deeply and is madly in love with her ex-husband. I’m a sucker for a story about lovers reconciling.
3. What was your most recent acting role before this play and what did you learn about yourself doing it?
I recently directed and played Donna in John Patrick Shanley’s The Dreamer Examines His Pillow.Donna is tough, straightforward, and willful; qualities that I admire but feel that I shy away from in my personal life. Donna helped me to be brave, which was helpful in directing my costars, two very talented, more experienced actors than I.