From engineering to encore: Jovanni Sy’s journey of reinvention

Jovanni Sy, MFA’23, remembers the first time he blew up his life. 

Working as an engineer in the private sector, he realized he wasn’t well-suited for an engineer’s life. Someone else might have ignored their true calling, but not Sy.

“I decided to change professions,” he says. “I was doing community theatre in my personal time, and I preferred performing. The kids are saying ‘blow up your life’ and that was the first time for me, leaving engineering.”

Three decades later, Sy returned to school for a Master of Fine Arts in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary, years into a career that took him across Canada and overseas as an actor, director, playwright and artistic director. It was an interest in teaching that brought him and his wife back to post-secondary learning. 

They joined the class of 2020, entering during the COVID-19 pandemic that created different learning environments for everyone. Despite that, Sy says the timing was perfect because professionally, he would have been stuck with nothing to do since theatres were closed. 

“The program saved me in a lot of ways,” he says. “I was languishing, but being back in class brought structure and purpose and community, most of all. My two years were two of the most creative of my life.” 

Christine Brubaker is an associate professor in Drama in the Faculty of Arts and acted as Sy’s advisor. They were peers previously, touring together as actors for nearly five years.

“My role was to give him feedback and encourage him to stretch farther, disrupt his process and get messy,” she says. “I was on his shoulder to remind him why he was here and what he was interested in pursuing—it is really valuable to have somebody bring an outsider perspective to your work.” 

The Stratford stage

During his MFA, Sy wrote two full-length plays and also co-wrote (with his wife Leanna Brodie) Salesman in China, which was produced at the 2024 Stratford Festival. His MFA thesis project, The Tao of the World, which he wrote and directed while at UCalgary, will see its professional world premiere at Stratford in 2026. 

“I went in with the intention of adapting a Restoration comedy but the more I tinkered with it, the more I ended up with a new play,” he says. “I call it my accidental play. I didn’t intend to write a new play while doing my thesis, but it was a weird and happy circumstance.”

“I couldn’t be happier to have Tao get its premiere there (Stratford), especially since it will be the final season for Antoni Cimolino, the outgoing artistic director—I owe him a lot for his faith and support.”

Sy was challenged during his time at UCalgary, in both the development of his thesis and the constraints the pandemic brought with it. He was originally going to develop an adaptation of a play by German playwright Bertolt Brecht but was encouraged to try comedy instead.

Brubaker shares that Sy has created something ‘profoundly unique’ with Tao. “He has created something like none other. I think it will be a real legacy piece that has a global reach — it’s fitting that it will be premiered on the Stratford stage.”

Masking and distancing and Omicron

Getting there wasn’t easy. Right after production in Calgary, the Omicron variant hit its peak and created complete chaos for theatre — again. Sy thought there would be no live performance, but Brubaker and former department chair, April Viczko, fought to make sure Sy would have an audience. 

“Live performance is crucible. You can’t stop and start — that is the dynamic of live theatre,” says Brubaker. “You have Plan A, B, C and in this case, many more. But theatre is a shared social practice and doesn’t exist without an audience, so it was critical that it was performed live in front of a live audience – even if they were spread out and masked.”

Sy says that rehearsals were ‘a circus’ because they never had the same people together. It wasn’t until six days before the first public performance that his cast of 21 was in the same room. 

“It was a crazy time, but it was a great experience to feel like I am unflappable,” he says. “When you deal with that uncertainty and improvisation, about literally everything, it gives me confidence that no matter what, you can always deal with it.”

UCalgary’s program was a draw for Sy because of people like Brubaker on the faculty.

“The faculty are active practitioners, which is not the case in a lot of theatre programs in Canada. There is a divide between academia and artists who practice,” Sy says. “It’s not uncommon for people with mature practices to come to UCalgary, because the faculty is so great. They get it.”

Now, Sy is enjoying what he calls his ‘third act,’ with a flourishing freelance career alongside teaching. 

“The arts are the soul of our society — a living testimony of who we are and what we stand for,” he says. “I love sharing. I have learned a lot, and now it’s my time to pass it on.”