With unprecedented access to the rehearsal process, our reporter gets a backstage view of how ‘Come From Away’ was created

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For seven weeks this summer, Pessano wraps herself in the complex – and sometimes lonely – job of delivering the show to Fresno audiences on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. As someone who loves theater, I have often wondered how a director shapes what audiences see when the stage lights come up. I get the answer with “Come From Away” because Pessano lets me attend some rehearsals – usually a closed space to outsiders. And even when she asks me to stay away because of the cast’s vulnerability, she is vulnerable about herself – telling me about the night her frustration boiled over and she lost it.

Simply put – and actually there’s nothing simple about it – Pessano plays the roles of coach, critic, protector, even therapist as she and her cast make the journey to the opening night of “Come From Away.”

As that night nears, Pessano makes clear that she believes in the power of the show and in what she and her cast can accomplish together. “Go out on that stage and feel it,” she says. “That’s what acting is. I know it’s going to move people. They just don’t know it yet.”

Monday, Aug. 10

46 days to Opening Night

Rehearsals begin with a first-day-of-school vibe. Cast members hug and chatter away like friends who haven’t seen each over summer vacation.

They gather in a rehearsal hall on a Tower District strip of storefronts that has seen better days. Inside, a sturdy red wing chair, a mushy green couch and a giant Tootsie Roll cylinder suggest a yard sale waiting to happen.

Stage Manager Joie Adams reminds the cast to sign in and then tries to corral them into taking seats. Four rows of well-worn banquet chairs are arranged under long fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling and casting a harsh light.

At 5:59 – with a minute to spare before the 6 p.m. start – Pessano arrives with the unmistakable presence of someone who made her stage debut at 7. (Actually, at 7 months, she appeared in “The King and I.” “I was basically a prop,” Pessano tells me.)

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“Hi, everyone,” she begins, the signature lilt to her voice. “It’s been a while” – then with a perfectly-timed pause – “or not.” Pessano knows what to do with a line, having performed in 39 GCP shows.

She quickly gets down to business. The cast will work all week on the music. She wants everyone “off book” (meaning lines memorized) by next week. She expects to run the rehearsals at a quick pace. “I’m looking forward to it,” she says. “Be prepared to be flexible. That will be the name of the game.”

She leaves unspoken the fact that “Come From Away” is no sure thing for Fresno audiences. Pessano will have enough tough things to say as rehearsals go forward, but she’s also mindful of this: “The last thing you want to do is get in people’s heads.” She tells me this truth when explaining that directors (or actors, for that matter) need to know when the time is right – and wrong – to bring up certain subjects.

Here are the realities about “Come From Away.” In the first place, it isn’t well-known, lacking the popular recognition baked into productions like “Annie” and “Shrek,” also on GCP’s 2026 schedule.

Will that unfamiliarity make a difference in the never-ending quest “to put butts in the seats” – as GCP managing director Dan Pessano puts it? Positive word of mouth from early audiences is crucial, and both Pessanos, father and daughter, know it.

Secondly, the structure of “Come From Away” isn’t “Sound of Music” simple. Each of the 24 actors in the show plays at least two characters, and most depend on different accents (Newfoundlander, Texan, British, Middle Eastern, American) plus some minor costume changes to communicate shifting identities. The show is a series of scenes – some connected, some not – taking place on a minimal set.

Pessano welcomes those challenges because the stripped-down storytelling of “Come From Away” – with the emphasis on human connection – is, for her, the best theater. “I think the script is pretty wonderful, and as a performer, I would want to do all the parts,” she tells me.

“Come From Away” is chock-full of human beings reacting, coping and experiencing some of their worst – and surprisingly – best days. “I want something the audience can connect to because of the acting, the storytelling, the human content,” Pessano says. “I always want people to feel something, whether it’s good, bad or challenging. I think as a society we’re generally pretty desensitized to our emotions.”

Monday, Aug. 17

39 days to Opening Night

Janet Glaudé sits alone in the rehearsal hall studying her script. A veteran of dozens of GCP shows, she wears a purple “Dreamgirls” shirt, a keepsake of the 1990 production in which she performed. Glaudé’s work of honing her character will catch Pessano’s attention tonight.

As other cast members show up, some remember to sign in. Pessano arrives – and then quickly leaves, taking the cast with her. The water is out in the only bathroom, forcing everyone to move two blocks to another rehearsal space near Kaos Headquarters, a beauty salon.

“Welcome to chaos,” Pessano wryly notes as cast members take seats arranged in an oval. “None of this is ideal, but at least there are three bathrooms.”

Mark Standriff, playing the mayor of Gander, opens the rehearsal with an accent unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Standriff describes it as a mashup between the accents of Ireland, Scotland, France and Canada. To me, it sounds more Irish, with an echo of the American Midwest. Flat and clear.

Pessano, sitting on a stool, writes notes with an Apple Pencil on an iPad. One hundred minutes later, she’s ready to share those notes with the cast.

First topic: The Newfoundland accents of everyone in the show. “We need to be really clear about those accents because after we’ve introduced everyone from Gander, you’re gonna be playing different roles, and that’s a moment when it could start to confuse the audience,” she says.

Over the next 25 minutes, Pessano offers praise and instruction. Timing in a comic scene works well. Emotion in a dramatic scene needs dialing back. Singing must stay true to the songs as written; cast members cannot improvise.

Pessano takes a gentle approach with Glaudé as Hannah, the mother of a New York City firefighter who might, or might not, have responded to the Twin Towers. Glaudé started performing with GCP in 1982 – four years before Pessano was born. “Come From Away” is their first collaboration as director and actor. “As an actor, I need to be able to understand the director’s vision of the show and how my character should be played,” Glaudé says.

In the rehearsal, she delivers with aching intensity “I Am Here” – a song that speaks to a mother’s pain in not being able to search for her son.
“Janet, I love it,” Pessano says. “I know you’ve been practicing more than anyone here, but let’s just try the first bit a little softer. Hannah is shattered and then the sadness and rage build into something. You can surprise me with whatever feels right for now, and then we’ll see.”

Glaudé nods in agreement. This is a director respecting, collaborating with and giving a veteran actor artistic freedom to explore a role.

Working with different personalities is a challenge that Pessano accepts. “I do know these people, and there are times I’ll take a day to figure out how to approach something because I can tell the person is on edge and I’m about to send them over,” she tells me.

Other times, Pessano speaks with a directness that leaves no room for ambiguity. Her final note tonight is about the ensemble needing to tightly harmonize. A few cast members are straying from her direction by pushing their voices, and she hears them. “Unfortunately no one gets to put on their own party in this show,” she says. “I will find you and be on you. We need to be of one voice.”

Wednesday, Aug. 19

37 days to Opening Night

This is the hot August night when Pessano has her meltdown, and she and the cast are still in the rehearsal space next to Kaos. A faded, black painted line creates the shape of the stage at Roger Rocka’s. This is where actors learn to stand, dance and move before they begin rehearsing on the actual stage.

In “Come From Away,” that movement (“blocking” is the theatrical term) revolves around the 16 wooden chairs plus a rolling chair, two sturdy
steel-framed tables with wood-like tops and a small, round cafe table.

“It’s absolutely carnage on stage trying to figure out the traffic patterns,” Pessano tells me.

The actors go scene by scene, with Pessano sometimes stopping them in mid-scene to figure out what’s going wrong. Some cast members are stressing – you see it on their faces. Haleigh Cook, one of the actors with dance experience, sees the chairs as dance partners. She draws pictures in her script and studies the photos taken during rehearsals to learn her part.

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When “Come From Away” debuted on Broadway in 2017, chairs were central to the set. But some productions of the show opt for other set pieces, like the one I recently saw at a theater in the round in Sacramento.
That director used suitcases for the seats on the plane and bus.

“I never really wanted anything but chairs, though suitcases do sound cool,” Pessano tells me. “I want the whole show to feel honest to audiences, and I think the chairs accomplish that. When you stage a show that’s a bit more abstract like this one, you have to choose whether to lean into that or keep it simple. There are different ways to approach this story, but I didn’t want to interfere with the script or the style that’s built into the show.”

(Side note: In Sacramento, I struck up a conversation with a woman wearing a hat decorated with the Canadian maple leaf. “The f—ing world is upside down right now,” she told me. “Everyone needs to see this show.” The woman, an American, has seen it multiple times. Pessano can only hope for that reaction in Fresno.)

Back at rehearsal, she keeps offering suggestions as the cast works on blocking, but she acknowledges it’s an evolving process. “Let’s go back to the top and piece it together,” she says.

“Piece it together.” The phrase catches the attention of Steve Souza, a cast member and co-choreographer with Pessano. He quietly sings a few lines from a similarly titled Sondheim song, “Putting It Together.”

Souza doesn’t get to the lyrics that lay down the challenge facing Pessano:

Having just the vision’s no solution
Everything depends on execution
As the song declares: That’s what counts!

Wednesday, Sept. 9

16 days to Opening Night

The bathroom is working again, and rehearsals are back in the bigger hall.

I’ve stayed away because of the actors’ stress in learning their movements and the choreography with the chairs – work that is nerve-racking enough without an outsider looking on.

“Wow, what a time!” Pessano says, recalling what I missed seeing. The show appears simple but is really complicated, and at times it overwhelms the cast, many of them polished performers used to starring roles. In this ensemble show with no star, the actors must maintain near-constant motion on stage to achieve the intricate timing required of their performances. “It seems simple to the audience if we do it right, and it should all feel very effortless and natural,” Pessano tells me.

But rehearsals are challenging and often tense, she says: “I have all the best people, but this process brought out the worst in all of them at one point or another. But the only reason is because they all care very much about the project.”

That intensity leads to trouble. Some actors try to solve problems before Pessano can identify actual problems. Others fear they will be left behind in mastering the stage movement. Some worry that Pessano will settle for “just good enough,” she says.

The cast’s frustration brings out another side of Pessano as director. She’s OK when the cast is not OK with her in the tense moments. Navigating those times means becoming “a bit of a therapist in the only way I’m capable,” Pessano says. “Listening as best I can, learning each cast member’s personality and how best to handle it.”

She tries to keep calm, when she can, but sometimes she can’t. It happens when a problem that was fixed suddenly becomes unfixed. At one rehearsal, Pessano says, she ran across the stage, grasping her hair and yelling. “We just did this yesterday! What’s happening? We just fixed this!”

Wednesday, Sept. 23

Two days to Opening Night

The cast is finally rehearsing at Roger Rocka’s. It’s a time to figure out lighting, get used to movement on the actual stage and perform the show to isolate scenes that still need work. Glitches remain in getting chairs into the right spots. But the worst of the confusion seems over.

Nevertheless, a certain tension settles over the room. Standriff paces, silently mouthing what I assume are his lines. Another actor, Daniel Sutherland, wanders across the space, cracking his knuckles. Pessano puts small pieces of colored electrical tape on the stage to help with placement of the chairs.

At 7 p.m., they begin a run-through of the show with Pessano again taking notes on her iPad. Away from her, in a darkened corner of the room, Dan Pessano watches. This is both his professional life (he started GCP in the 1970s and still heads it) and his personal life (he and his wife, Laurie, named their only child after the Emily of “Our Town,” his favorite play).

Dan Pessano tells me he would happily answer his daughter’s questions about directing “Come From Away” if she asked. She doesn’t. “She’s pretty independent, and that’s actually validating,” he says. “Emily has an eye for movement that’s necessary in a show, and she combines that with an actress’ knowledge of what’s real [in acting] and how to get there honestly.”

Some actors’ performances tonight stand out – the approach of opening night produces something intense and sharp. Jessica Sarkisian, for one, creates a moment when she sings about her character’s journey from childhood fascination with planes to flying Paris-to-Dallas on 9/11 as an American Airlines captain.

After the run-through, Pessano stands before the cast in a room that will soon be filled with people eating and drinking and whose attention the actors will want but have no way of commanding – except with their performances.

She is direct about her expectations. “You need to be emotionally in the moment. You have to look at each other and have it be a new night every night even though we’re doing the same thing.”

She also gives a warning. “Don’t dick around, and I mean that with love. What we do is sacred. I’m saying it now so when I come up in a rage you won’t be surprised.”

Her words surprise me. What prompts that blunt talk? Nothing specific, Pessano tells me. Instead, it’s her knowing that many in the cast like one another and work well together. That is a good thing if familiarity doesn’t lead to loss of concentration on stage. “I just smell it on the horizon, and I want to stop it before it starts,” she tells me.

Pessano delivers her plain-spoken words to a cast that includes longtime friends and fellow performers – people she’s shared laughs and good times with as fellow actors. These are her people. But as the director this time around, she enters into a different space out of necessity.

“I don’t want anyone in the cast to feel they can’t talk to me or trust me, but I’m also not too friendly. And it’s hard,” Pessano tells me. “ I want to be upstairs in the dressing room hanging out with everyone. But I separate myself because that’s their time and I stay out of it. It’s just a different dynamic.”

A complex dynamic is another way to describe it. “I get to help and guide and make sure everybody looks good, and I’m protecting them,” Pessano says. “And it’s so much easier with people you love. But I have to put myself on a separate island. The people I know really well, I know they still love and care and respect me. They can still reach out to me, and I usually let it be like that.”

At 11:45, the cast heads home while Pessano stays to talk with her production team. They wrap up at 12:15 a.m.

Friday, Sept. 25

Opening Night

Pessano meets with the cast before the show. I don’t ask to be there because that is a moment for participants, not an observer. But, of course, I ask her what she tells the actors.

“Let’s go do this. I’m really excited for people to see your work – our work.”

As servers deliver and then clear plates and the din of conversations fills the room, Pessano and Assistant Director Lex Martin find seats at a table in a quieter corner of the dinner theater.

At 8:03 p.m. the room goes completely dark and the audience quiets. There’s anticipation for what lies ahead, and when the stage lights come up, the actors quickly move into spots for their opening anthem, “Welcome to the Rock.” It’s their name for Newfoundland.

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The audience welcomes the show. They laugh when the storyline arrives at the meandering moose and at the randy cardiologists.

I’m seated with two young couples, and the women have tears when two characters bond over a Bible verse. One of the men wonders at intermission whether the actors are from Newfoundland. The accents sound that authentic to him. He likes that the show tells this story of 9/11 with a “small-town vibe.”

And the complicated movement on stage that caused the director and cast so much grief? I watch for problems, and then get caught up in the show, not thinking about the flow of actors and chairs. And that seems to me the director’s goal: Produce order on the stage so the acting can create something real.

“It’s supposed to feel effortless and honest – I think we’re getting there,” Pessano says of the stage movement after the show is over.

Getting there. Those words strike me. Work on “Come From Away” will continue. Even with a standing ovation from the opening-night audience, Pessano sees things that only the director can spot: Nerves, rushed dialogue and problems in timing. All things she can help her actors fix for audiences yet to come.

In Pessano’s corner of the theater, a sense of satisfaction settles in. “We all put in so much – I think it’s going to show,” she says. “I can’t wait to give people a chance to feel, to listen, to reflect and to hope.”