Drama Queens, a five-star arts journal focusing on female artists

Gianna Milici Interview by Jen Bush

Cowgirl Summer is a featured production in the Fresh Fruit Festival, NYC’s most inclusive celebration of the LQBTQ arts.

Cowgirl Summer is a play about fan fiction, living on the internet, queer awakenings, and being a horny teenage girl. The story follows twin sisters as they write and record their own Harry Styles podcast in their school library. When their story becomes popular online, they come face to face with the reality of internet anonymity- the excitement, the uncertainty, and the danger.

Featuring Nanouli Shevardnadze, Yuval Benit, and Katie Kane. With Calliope Pina Parker, Katelyn Kahn, Erin Browning, Kyla Jeanne, and Maaike Laanstra-Corn

We had a lovely chat with the director, Gianna Milici about the show and her craft.

  Gianni Milici said yee haw to the arts in high school! She was inspired to venture into the arts then and is now a performer, director and writer.  “I have been involved with the performing arts truthfully since High School Musical 2 came out and developed an obsession as a kid. I soon discovered over a decade of loving and doing theater in high school and at NYU that I am a storyteller through performing, directing and writing. I’ve been having the best time post grad helping to develop new works, having worked on shows at Ars Nova, the Tank, and now the Fresh Fruit Festival!”

Sometimes a personal connection can be fruitful for both parties, no pun intended.  That’s exactly what happened between Ms. Milici and the playwright KJ Stewart.  “I’ve been a fan of KJ’s work since we first met in my sophomore year of college. I auditioned for their brilliant adaptation of the 2007 movie Teeth at Playwrights Horizons Downtown. KJ created room for us to bring our silliness and artistry to their project, blend comedy and horror, and ever since then I am continuously in awe of KJ’s brain and heart. So when I got the script for Cowgirl Summer and was asked to direct, it was an immediate yes. As a One Direction/Harry Styles lover and also having been a teenage girl struggling to understand love in all its forms, this play meant the absolute world to me.”

Ms. Milici’s creative process entails collaboration and fun.  “My creative process, especially for Cowgirl Summer, involves a lot of leading with love through collaboration. Every single person in this process is a genius and downright silly, and having such thoughtful ideas and perspectives being brought into the room is just pure joy. And this is a play, so that means we have to play and have fun. It is also so important to me in any creative process to create space for every kind of idea. It’s not so black and white with a good idea and bad idea. There’s just silly ideas that lead to good ideas which lead to great ideas. A lot of the process of developing this play is honoring everyone’s personal relationship to the material, trying things out, and seeing what sticks.”

This production brings up some very interesting thoughts about using the internet.  It will likely be thought provoking for the audience as well as entertaining.  “I hope this play sparks conversation about how from the millennial generation and on, we were never really taught how to navigate the internet and all of its access to information along with our adolescence. There is an excitement, a danger, and an uncertainty to having access to so much information and not knowing what to do with it. There is an intersectionality being explored of loving and idolizing a celebrity, a podcast, a sibling, a friend on the internet and I hope the audience can equivalate their own personal relationship to love and the virtual world to the material, whether they have been a teenage girl part of a fandom or not.”

Ms. Milici’s experience with the Fresh Fruit Festival has been a “sweet” one!  I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this festival with other incredible artists. A festival of new work is music to my ears. There is nothing like a marathon of brand-new work. It is so vulnerable and to be able to be submerged in so much inspiration is freaking awesome.

For Ms. Milici, life is about to be a cabaret with her upcoming one-woman show!  “Besides continuing to work with KJ and support their future work in any way possible, I

personally have a one-woman musical comedy cabaret going up May 19th at Rockwood Music

Hall called Pretty Delusional. The link to info about the show and tickets are here!

Hop on the Insta horse and follow Cowgirl Summer for up to date information and cool photos. @cowgirlsummerplay !