Brooke (Wetzel) Ciardelli is an American theater and film director, producer and writer. She founded the award-winning regional theater company Northern Stage in White River Junction, Vermont.
Early life and education
Brooke (Wetzel) Ciardelli was born in Manhattan, New York. Her father, Joseph A. Wetzel (1934 - ), founded Joseph A. Wetzel Associates, a museum design firm and is currently a photographer... Her mother, Joyce E. Dickson (1934-2001), was a corporate art curator for the collections of Terence J. Fox, Greenwich, CT.
After a competitive figure skating career, Ciardelli received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College, with a concentration in theater. She subsequently worked at The Williamstown Theater Festival and the Broadway general managers/producers office of Gatchell & Neufeld.
Early Career: Film Production
In the 1990s, Ciardelli served as Co-Producer for A Stranger In The Kingdom starring Martin Sheen ; Producer for The Junior Defenders, starring Ally Sheedy; and Co-Writer and Creative Producer for Wedding Band (My X-Girlfriend's Wedding Reception, starring Mo Gaffney and Debbie Gibson. She served as a Producer of Special Projects for Burlington City Arts and worked for a number of years with the Burlington Jazz Festival and the Ben & Jerry's Festival, as well as providing management services to a number of bands and singer/songwriters, including Jon Fishman's side project Spastic, the Martin Guigui Band, the Chad Hollister Band, and others.
Founding of Northern Stage
Ciardelli founded the Northern Stage Theater Company (Washington Post, Jonathan Finer), a non-profit, regional theater, in Burlington, VT in 1994. In 1997, Ciardelli moved the company to the historic Briggs Opera House in White River Junction (as reported in the Vermont Standard and the Vermont Times).
Ciardelli led the company as artistic director and CEO from 1997 to 2012, during which time Northern Stage produced 111 main stage productions over 16 seasons, 52 directed or co-directed 52 by Ciardelli. (Boston Herald, Terry Byrne.), and won five Moss Hart Awards for Excellence in Theater from the New England Theatre Conference.
Ciardelli also won an Addison Award for The Shrew Tamer, which she adapted and directed, and an Owl Award for Best Artistic Director.
As well as play readings, Ciardelli held enrichment activities in conjunction with some of the productions, and collaborated with other organizations, including Opera North (U.S.A.), Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art and The AVA Gallery). Ciardelli also established the "Celebrity Saturday" talk-back series to allow audiences to interact directly with professional actors and directors, as well as the Athena Sunday series of expert pre-show lectures.
Ciardelli developed a series of educational programs, supported by various charitable and educational foundations, for fifth and sixth graders in Vermont and New Hampshire, including acting, singing, dancing, filmmaking and playwriting workshops led by working theater professionals from New York and around the country. The young performers and playwrights could see their work performed by professional actors, directors and designers on the Briggs Opera House stage. Ciarelli also arranged matinee productions of the company's professional productions for students. In 2011, Ciardelli developed and implemented a National Endowment for the Arts literacy program, with events available live, over the Internet and via community access cable.
A major collaboration with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Medical School to send students and medical residents to Northern Stage's production of Wit. Other major collaborations have involved Opera North, Pentangle Arts Council, The Haven, CATV-8 Community Access Television, the Center for Cartoon Studies, Norwich University, the Hartford Library, the Quechee Library, and many area non-profits.
Director and Producer
In her career, Ciardelli has directed over 60 productions in association with Northern Stage. (CT Valley Spectator, Aaron Nobel). As a director, she has been honored by the New England Theatre Conference's Moss Hart Awards for Excellence in Theater three times.
Ciardelli directed a staged reading of Arthur Miller's then-unpublished Resurrection Blues, with the playwright himself in residence; has directed Patrick Stewart and Lisa Harrow in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; and worked with British playwright Sonja Linden on the American Premiere of The Strange Passenger.