Mt. Lebanon-based No Name Players walk on the web side with ‘The Sisters Sorella’
Tressa Glover and Don DeGiulio spearhead the No Name Players as, respectively, producing artistic director and founder/artistic director.
Julianne Avolio, Tressa Glover and Maggie Carr are “The Sisters Sorella.”
“The Sisters Sorella”: from left, Julianne Avolio, Tressa Glover and Maggie Carr
“The Sisters Sorella”: from left, Maggie Carr, Julianne Avolio and Tressa Glover
Julianne Avolio
Maggie Carr
Tressa Glover
You know the creative juices are flowing when a theater company comes up with something along the lines of “The Truth About Santa: An Apocalyptic Holiday Tale.”
The Mt. Lebanon-based No Name Players pulled that one off a few holiday seasons ago at Pittsburgh’s Arcade Comedy Theater, complete with narration by “a very angry elf and a very happy elf, on ukuleles,” according to the show’s director and No Name founder, Don DiGiulio.
The cockamamie Claus concept generated sufficient laughs to help forge a partnership between Arcade and the No Namers, leading to what became a steady gig at the theater.
“Throughout all this, Tressa had this idea for developing the stories of her Italian family, specifically the women,” DiGiulio said about Tressa Glover, the No Name Players’ producing artistic director.
“We were trying to figure out a way to do it,” he explained. “So once we started this creative relationship with Arcade, we thought, what if we tried to do a monthly sitcom, but live on stage?”
They tried and succeeded with “The Sisters Sorella,” which was performed under DiGiulio’s direction before audiences for 11 episodes last year, complete with live commercials, and lives on in 2016 as a web-based series.
Glover, credited as creator, stars as one of the title characters, along with Julianne Avolio and Maggie Carr. All three collaborate to write the show, which they bill as “3 Sisters. 1 Apartment. Total DysFUNction.”
“It isn’t so much specific stories,” Glover said about the overall theme. “It’s the feel of it, the cacophony of all of it. It’s 10 conversations at a time, or just the way you relate to each other.”
Those in attendance must have related to the Sorellas – that’s “sisters” in Italian – and their antics.
“From January to February, we had 80 percent audience retention, and the same thing for March,” DiGiulio said. “Then we started introducing new characters, and we mapped out the rest of the season.”
That took “The Sisters Sorella” all the way through December, with a break in July. In true TV tradition, June’s episode was a cliffhanger, with the particular predicament of Glover’s character, Ernestine – named after her real-life dad, Ernie – being resolved in August.
As the live run progressed, the No Name Players applied for a grant through the Steeltown Entertainment Project Indie Program, which assists groups in developing the projects. When the grant came through, the ensemble was able to follow through with the Sorellas’ second phase.
“We had all decided to do a web series because they’re shorter chunks, and a lot of times you gain more traction that way,” Glover said, as opposed to, say, devoting the grant money to developing a full-length pilot.
And so in January and April, the cast and crew gathered again for filming, resulting in nine shorts to be introduced on a monthly basis.
“The characters, themselves, remained the same, and the backstory and everything remained the same,” DiGiulio, who started the No Name Players while attending Marshall University in 2000, explained about the new run. “But the way we revealed the information changed a bit. So the web series essentially starts from scratch, to catch up people who weren’t able to see the live version.”
Serving as director for the online episodes is Pittsburgh-based filmmaker and videographer Bailey Donovan.
“He came in and really helped us a lot in making the transition to how to do it for film,” DiGiulio said. “I can work with actors, and I can talk with them about story and character. But I can’t tell you, ‘OK, if you put the camera over this part of her shoulder, then we’re going to catch that part of the floor.'”
The release of web episodes started in March, with the next installment, titled “Crossword,” scheduled for July 7.
“This one’s a weird one, too,” Glover revealed.
While she, Avolio and Carr have enjoyed working on the Internet version, they would like to see “The Sisters Sorella” return to its sitcom-length roots, either live or – hey, why not? – as a TV series.
In the meantime, Glover wants the project to continue to reflect her vision.
“There’s a heart to it, ultimately,” she said. “It’s important that you know it’s all about family in the end, even if they are, like, totally crazy.”
For more information, visit www.nonameplayers.org and www.sisterssorella.com.