How Savanna La Selva Is Rewriting the Stage for Women, One Role at a Time

As Savanna La Selva closed out the night at Manhattan’s Chain Theater, the Canadian-born actress took her final bow, not just for her role as Jacqueline Roque, Pablo Picasso’s last wife, but for giving voice to a woman that history tried to erase. In Minotauromachy, La Selva resurrects the untold stories of women sidelined by time, reminding audiences that behind every great man, there are women whose lives and legacies deserve to be seen. For La Selva, every performance is a step toward reclaiming forgotten narratives and reshaping the stage for women who have long been overlooked.

La Selva’s journey into the spotlight wasn’t a traditional one. Raised in a rigorous academic high school in Ontario, she saw the arts as an extracurricular—a passion but not a path. Despite never receiving formal acting training, La Selva was accepted into one of the top Dramatic Arts programs in the world. In fact, she didn’t take her first formal acting class until her first day of college at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Music was always La Selva’s second language. By the age of 13, she was already playing the guitar, piano, flute, and piccolo. Those skills now serve as the foundation for every new score, song, and script she picks up. She builds each character like a sound, mapping their cadence before the dialogue is even ready.

Minotauromachy turns Picasso’s biography inside-out. It lets the women who loved and endured his temper tell his story instead. In a Theatre Beyond Broadway review, critic Malini Singh McDonald said La Selva’s embodiment of Roque was part of an ensemble that “powerfully” reclaimed space for six sidelined women in history. Across four performances, the production played to full-capacity audiences and then went on to win the Audience Choice Award at the 2025 New York City Fringe Festival.

La Selva created the role using scarce footage that remained of Roque. She pieced her personality together from letters and interviews with art historians as the character's originator. She confronted the question that revealed Roque’s emotional world — How heavy was the cost of her devotion? The result was a subtle but meaningful character choice, such as the tension that arose in the actress when Picasso’s name was spoken — a depth that La Selva displayed poignantly.

La Selva’s next premiere reworked an old mythology. In SYZYGY: A New Musical, La Selva also originates Venus, the planet who spins the “goddess of love” cliché into something new.

Where the Roque character was restrained by history, Venus was open to range, both vocally and emotionally. Even getting to play her guitar on stage, La Selva demonstrated to audiences that she could toggle between extremes, making it her signature style.

The Flea Theater was where La Selva first made her way in the industry, performing Off-Broadway in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. She has since had multiple shows at Broadway’s 54 Below, placing her in lineups alongside Tony winners and recording legends.

Looking forward, La Selva hopes to bring one of her current originals, Roque or Venus, into a commercial house on Broadway. She hopes to apply her impressive ability to originate characters in indie cinema, especially in more roles that re-examine historical women through a modern lens.

She hopes to continue performing in new works that put misunderstood women’s stories at the forefront, ensuring they receive the time and attention they deserve. Although the theater industry is constantly developing, one thing is sure: when Savanna La Selva steps into the spotlight, history’s forgotten women don’t just reappear; they speak, command, and finally take center stage.