Director Sammi Cannold is at the helm of the current production of the famed musical, Evita, currently playing at the American Repertory Theater (ART) in Cambridge, MA with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Lyrics by Time Rice. She is an exciting and young director (by NYC theater standards) whose works include a site-specific Violet performed on a bus and Ragtime at Ellis Island and the world-premiere of Celine Song’s play, Endlings, at the ART. This is not her first tango with Evita, having previously grappled with this material several times, including at New York City Center’s in 2019, and having taken several research trips to Argentina to inform her work.
I recently spoke with Cannold about the psychology of Evita, how lived experience informs perspective and how Evita’s story in the musical is actually one not of tragedy but of triumph. Her answers revealed immense amounts of insight and awe into the life of Evita and the current production on stage in Cambridge.
What did you learn about Eva Peron as a person, her psychology and what drove her and how did you translate that into the character of Evita?
The only biography that we have, or autobiography, so to speak, is one that was very much written by someone else [the musical Evita]. We don’t truly know what she was thinking. It’s a really interesting project to try to guess and surmise from reading private letters that she wrote to Peron and looking at pictures of her and trying to read her face; it’s such an elusive part of her journey.
Her image was so managed, at her own behest. I think about Hillary Clinton a lot when I think about her because I feel like Hillary’s image was so specifically managed and then there was that moment when she was on the campaign trail and she cried. It was revelatory and everybody was saying, “Oh my G-d, she’s a human”. And then we get this Hulu documentary and all of these things that feel really raw and honest and personal. I feel like Evita never really got to the point where she learned that her real self was valuable. She wanted to craft her image. Anything that might detract from the image was a ‘bad thing’. There’s this whole controversy over her actual birth name, birthplace and birth date because she obscured so much of the information so that you couldn’t actually get the real facts because she was embarrassed about certain elements of her upbringing.
Also, previously this story has been interpreted by men. My personal way into this, without throwing any shade at those incredible men who did amazing things with this property, is that I am a young woman who is the age that Evita was when this story was happening to her. What would I feel if I were in these moments? That has really been my “north star”.
Can you talk about that aspect of directing this piece? How does her personal narrative link to the importance of storytelling and the values that this story imparts?
I think it is this “rags-to-riches” journey, as well as this idea that this woman is larger than life, that intrigues people. The spectacle of her and the glamor of her is something that is really intoxicating for people. It has all the ingredients of a story that really captivates an audience in addition to this incredible score.
I think with a show like Evita, so much is left to the director’s interpretation in a way that I really appreciate. I actually got to talk to Tim Rice about this; I’ve seen productions of Evita where I feel like a director who doesn’t like Evita can make that opinion very clear in the way that they direct it. For my production, it’s about agency and digging deeper into women’s stories.
You spoke earlier about Evita’s history and how she tried to obfuscate some of the facts of her history. What do you think she was trying to distance herself from?
I think that she wanted to hide the fact that she was illegitimate. That’s part of why Peron was criticized for being with her. It was traditional for the mother of the First Lady to be the head of the philanthropic women’s charity that existed at the time in Argentina but because her mother was not married to her father in a way that was recognized, the society women said, “No”, and they wouldn’t allow her to be the head of this foundation. So then Evita started her own foundation out of spite. She was very spiteful. It’s things like that that, I think, really upset her. I’ve thought about how she felt embarrassed or shamed about her “illegitimacy” and then finding the sense of belonging where she’s adored by the people.
When we were in Argentina doing research, I got to go to the towns where she grew up and where she was born. In those towns, when you talk to the local historians and you hear the stories, you learn that she was ostracized in those towns even before she got to Buenos Aires. She was not a popular kid.
Do you think that at some point she was seduced by money and power?
I think the money part is about her trying to understand how to be a leader; she wasn’t educated above 6th grade. This is someone who doesn’t really have a handle on world politics.
When she was acting in Buenos Aires in her early years, she was on a radio program where she played different women from history like Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. She’s looking at the example of these great women from history. And thinking, what do I know about them? They were glamorous. They had a lot of money, and they had a lot of power. In a way, she was modeling herself off of these women. If I want to be like them, that’s what I have to be.
When I was in Argentina, I got to go to San Vicente where she and Peron had a weekend house. That was so informative because it was not lavish at all. It was this little house that had a lot of rooms but it wasn’t a mansion. Privately, she just wanted to be with this guy she really loved.
What do you think is the tragedy of her story?
I think the way we’re telling the story is a little bit of a “bait and switch” in the sense that it follows the trajectory of a tragedy but, to me, her story is not actually a tragedy.
She’s speaking for herself diegetically throughout the whole show but she doesn’t really get to speak for herself to the audience until she sings, “Lament”. In that song she says, “the choice was mine and mine completely; I could have any prize that I desired or I could burn brightly. I chose this path.”
When Evita was diagnosed with cancer the doctors told her that this is the same cancer that your mother had. Her mother had a hysterectomy to treat it and the cancer didn’t kill her. They recommended the same surgery to Evita to save her life. My dark interpretation of “Lament” is that when she decided to forgo the surgery, she was saying, “You can’t remove my uterus because if I don’t have a uterus, how can I be the mother of the people of Argentina?” It is a deranged thing to say but also very poetic and meaningful. I think in a way she understood that she had reached the apex of how beloved and adored she was ever going to be.
She knew that things were not going to go well from there. Her husband’s administration was starting to come under a lot of scrutiny; he ended up being deposed in a coup three years after she died. I think she saw the writing on the wall. There’s something about her embracing herself dying as a martyr for her people at a young age and being remembered as this bright star versus being remembered as an elderly woman who’s husband’s administration crumbled. I think she had a bigger game in mind.
Maybe that is where being a female director impacts your perspective of the work, that you can see where she had agency with more clarity?
I was really interested in the idea that this is a woman who has a legacy of being called a slut. To call someone a “slut” who was on a sexual journey and as someone who was raped as a teenager, how do we frame that narrative to be fair to her?
I think it really starts with the idea that when she was a teenager, she didn’t have agency. When she met Magaldi [singer who she meets early in Act I of Evita], she was 15 and he was 36. Was that statutory rape? There weren’t laws governing that at the time. The laws of Argentina said that she could marry him if she wanted to. Did she consent? We’ll never know. Did she have the agency as a 15-year-old to be able to say, “No”? My opinion on that is: No. And so in our production, she really gains agency in the number, “Buenos Aires” where she’s in the city, she is assaulted again by men, she overcomes that and she claims her agency in that moment. From then on, exercising her agency becomes something she’s obsessed with.
Evita is playing at the ART through July 30th. You can get tickets at the American Repertory Theater website, with many affordable options include low-price tickets, rush tickets and $25 tickets for theatergoers under 25.