According to playwright Selina Fillinger, in order to explore the ways in which women can internalize misogyny in our culture, POTUS puts smart women at the center of a very silly narrative. It’s a delightful opportunity to laugh in the midst of the political cycle, which can be intense and heated. It is rude. I…
Much more than the sum of its jealous, sexually threatened, angry, paranoid, violently sundering, new beginning, innocent, open, reconciliatory, and magical parts, The Winter’s Tale is to do with searching for redemption or reconciliation after something absolutely horrific has taken place. I wanted to direct this play in Buffalo in 2024 because I could think…
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” – Matthew 7:1-2 “We are stardust, we are golden.We are billion-year-old carbon,And we got to get ourselvesBack to the garden.” – Crosby, Stills, Nash, and…
I know every organization with which you have ever brushed shoulders (remember brushing shoulders?) wants you to know that they are ‘with you’; we’re thinking about you and, of course, we are thinking about the men behind the walls at the Moose Lake Correctional Facility. It’s an incredibly unsettling time. Moose Lake has the largest…
Travis and I drove up to the prison on Sunday evening to meet up with the men for a last work session on their pieces, in the multipurpose room where they were set to perform. This room is part library, part lecture hall; the Wiccans, the Catholics, and the Nation of Islam all share harmoniously…
Director’s Note The nation is bitterly divided by partisanship and politics. People are scarcely able to credit the humanity of those on the other side of the conflict. Women’s words are dismissed, discounted, and only finally heard far too late. There are regular and increasingly daring transgressions of the rule of law. Large numbers of…
Years ago, when I had made it through the early rounds of elimination for a Fulbright, I was scheduled to have a telephone interview with the Director of the UK Fulbright Commission. I remember receiving very stern written instructions that I was not, under any circumstances, to prepare a statement of any kind; the Director…
The cultural moment and the rehearsal process Fall 2017 turned out to be a very peculiar moment to be working with undergraduate students on a play that is about discovering and exploring one’s sexuality. When I accepted the project last spring, I had, half-jokingly, urged the Chair of the Department of Theatre & Dance at…
Last week, in our Redeeming Time weekly update, I opined at length on the myriad joys of the prison’s multipurpose room, where I delivered an introductory workshop in August before being exiled to a room with a squat column smack in the center of the space for the fall classes. Well, lo and behold, on…
When I arrived in the Twin Cities, I discerned that there were two fallow fields in this utterly verdant theatrical ecosystem where I judged that I could make an impact: I could start a classical theatre company or I could start a new prison performing arts program. But I didn’t think that I had the…
“I am not interested in living in a city where there isn’t a production by Samuel Beckett running.” ― Edward Albee 100 or so years ago, when I was a little baby director freshly arrived in NYC, I decided to direct Waiting for Godot. I cast the play entirely with women, because I observed that…
In collaboration with Executive Director Anne Bertram at Theatre Unbound, I curated an evening of short plays to be in conversation with Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, for its’ 100th anniversary; I directed all four pieces. We commissioned Minnesota playwrights Rhiana Yazzie and Maxie Rockymore to write new pieces that picked up Glaspell’s themes, and we capped…
When Joseph Papke at Classical Actors Ensemble asked me to direct Merchant of Venice, I was both delighted to be asked to work with this fresh young company and also wary at the prospect of tackling this deeply troubling play. Is this an anti-semitic play or is this a play about anti-semitism? Should we perform…
In 2016, as our contribution to the celebration of Shakespeare’s 400 year legacy, the men of RTA and I staged Twelfth Night at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. It was my fifth time directing this play; it was my fifth full production behind the walls. It was the first experience of Shakespeare for many of…
“I am the one thing in life I can control. I am inimitable, I am an original. Life doesn’t discriminate Between the sinners and the saints It takes and it takes and it takes And we keep living anyway We rise and we fall and we break And we make our mistakes.” I work with…
Paula Vogel’s Desdemona cannot outrun Shakespeare’s Othello. She cannot escape her death. Nor, at least as much to Vogel’s point, can any woman escape the restrictions and restraints placed upon her by the men who define her existence. Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief is one kind of feminist retelling of Shakespeare’s story. Vogel locates…
Some Essential Women Playwrights of the 20th & 21st Centuries In June, the Kilroys released their fantastic and important list of most recommended new plays by women. In July, partly in preparation to teach a course entitled Women in Theatre, partly because many of them have been on my ‘to do’ list for a long time and partly because I apparently abhor…
Last week’s Ira Hates Shakespeare furor illuminated one of the dingier corners within the house of social media: lots of heated, inflated, reductivist and binary declaiming. “Shakespeare’s amazing! “Shakespeare sucks!” This strikes me as particularly unhelpful and more than a little overwrought; can an art form really be undone by one ‘off the cuff’, late…
In the first half of 2014, I directed Death of a Salesman at Fishkill Correctional Facility, under the auspices of Rehabilitation Through the Arts. With my incarcerated assistant director, Johnny Hincapie, I wrote the following for the playbill: Willy Loman says, of his sons, “I got a couple of fearless characters,” to which his neighbor,…
In January, I was a participant in the month-long intensive at Shakespeare & Company. Tina Packer, Dennis Krausnick, Kevin Coleman and their colleagues have been teaching the intensive for more than 30 years, and intensive is categorically one of the operative descriptors: the hours are long and the work is profound (should one choose to…
In Fally 2013, I directed the premiere of Rosemary McLaughlin’s Paterson Falls within the Department of Theatre at Drew University in Madison, NJ. Paterson Falls chronicles and celebrates the ‘fragile bridge’ (to borrow a phrase from Steve Golin) that was built in 1913 between striking silk workers in Paterson, NJ and artists, intellectuals and Village…
I directed Our Town at Sing Sing Correctional Facility and the men, with their female civilian counterparts, performed the play twice for the population of the facility and once for an invited civilian audience of ~225. Thornton Wilder’s Our Town opened on Broadway on February 4, 1938 — this year, we celebrate the Pulitzer…
I just directed Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison. (If you’ve visited this site before, followed me on Twitter or possibly stumbled across my path on the subway, no doubt you already know this.) Even though the play was selected by their peers, several of the men in…
You can’t take an intermission at Sing Sing, and you cannot have a blackout. Well, this year, a blackout was not available to us because the lights never go out in the room where we presented the play and because the circuits in that space couldn’t handle the wattage of stage lighting. Also, there are…
I recently found myself lying on the prison floor, talking to George Gibbs about grief. [If you are new to my blog, you need to know that I am directing Our Town at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.] Thornton Wilder’s stage direction reads, “George sinks to his knees then falls full length at Emily’s feet.” My…
The individuals on the play selection committee all said that they wanted a comedy, or at least a story with some lighter moments in it. Over the course of several months, my colleagues and I made almost three dozen suggestions that fit the committee’s criteria, which include having a dozen or more roles for men…
No curtain. No scenery. Wilder wrote that he was trying to restore significance to the small details of life by stripping away the scenery, “Theatre longs to represent the symbols of things, not the things themselves.” Elsewhere, he observed, “Moliere said that for the theatre all he needed was a platform and a passion or…
First we want a little more information about the town There seems to be a nearly universal anxiety about the potential for the play to become mawkish in production, coupled with a rehearsal room realization that it is anything but maudlin. “Lots of directors go to it without a sense of why they’re doing it,”…
Once upon a time in October 1937, Thornton Wilder wrote to his dear friend, Gertrude Stein, “I can no longer conceal from you that I’m writing the most beautiful little play you can imagine… It’s a little play with all the big subjects in it; and it’s a big play with all the little…
Charese Scott-Cooper as Angel, Aissatu Young as Malika and Michelle Quintero Williams as Prix. I heard one of the first readings of Breath, Boom at the Public Theatre several years ago; I was immediately struck by the force of Kia’s writing. I also remember thinking that no one would ever let a white girl who…
In Acting II at Sing Sing this summer, we’ve been working on developing points of concentration, physical awareness and sense memory, discovering the dramatic action and building a character. In this regard, our class is much like Acting 201 just about anywhere. But we’re also looking for life skills, for mindful ways to interact with…
In Sunday’s Washington Post, Peter Marks opines the demise of men in tights and the ascent of the high concept. He writes, “It is the fashion in these meddling times — now perhaps more than ever — to put the doublets in mothballs and tie up Shakespeare in the threads of ponderous context. Only cursory…
Last night, we had the first session of an Intro to Acting workshop at Sing Sing. It was supposed to be for the men new to our program, but in the event, we had a nice mix of veterans and newbies, 15 men in total. I was leading a Patsy Rodenburg physical warm-up; at one…
Harley Granville Barker, a director, Shakespeare scholar and clever redhead, wrote, “Let us humbly own how hard it is not to write nonsense about art.” He wrote this in his preface to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is a kind of nonsense that becomes art. In no particular order, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is love,…
Last night, we put Claudius on trial. Miching mallecho If you’ve been reading my blog or following me on Twitter, you probably know that I’m teaching a Shakespeare workshop at Sing Sing Correctional Facility this autumn, that the men were curious but deeply skeptical about Shakespeare when we began. A few weeks into the workshop,…
I’m sitting in a run-down classroom as the sun slowly sets on the other side of the Hudson River. The windows are threaded with metal, and there are metal grates on the outside of the glass. Every so often, a corrections officer walks past the door. Twelve men sit with me in a circle. We’ve…
Bit by bit “Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.” — Knute Rockne How many hours each week are you working on your dream? I don’t ask how many hours you temp or wait tables; I am not asking…
I just finished an exhilarating, thrilling, grueling and very fun rehearsal process, directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the American Shakespeare Center. There was no opening night. At least, not yet. My production comprises one-third of the 2011-2012 Almost Blasphemy Tour, and the day after our second dress rehearsal for MND, the actors set to…
Once upon a time, when I was a little baby director, an artistic director asked me to name five playwrights whose work I particularly admired. Because I wasn’t prepared, and probably also because I was a little baby director, my mind went blanker than Peter Brook’s empty space and I stammered, “Uhhhh …. well …….
Overview We had two short weeks in impossibly beautiful Aspen to stage Steven Dietz’s Becky’s New Car — a whirlwind ride of a one woman show that happens to have six other actors in it. And while we were in tech, the carpenters, pavers and gardeners were working round the clock to complete Theatre Aspen’s…
On the verge of donut greatness How can I describe my experience directing Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts with men inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility? Thrilling, challenging, profoundly moving, frustrating, fun, exhilarating, playful, instructive, just like rehearsing any play with a dedicated company anywhere. Except that it isn’t. These men have all been convicted of serious…
I used to imagine that incarcerated actors would have no schedule conflicts. That they would be available to rehearse at any time. That they don’t have anything else to do. I was as wrong as I could be. I marvel at how busy the men who participate in Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) are: they…
You probably think this post is about you, don’t you? Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Last Thursday and Friday, I was casting a show that I’ll direct in June. The artistic director of the theatre and I were working with two capable, consummately professional casting directors. At the initial casting session,…
Two weeks ago, I started a fight at Sing Sing. If you don’t know Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts, there is a sprawling, protracted, chock-full-o-storytelling unarmed fight between two characters late in the second act. I was apprehensive about staging the fight because, in the playwright’s stage direction, “It goes through phases,” and while I have…
I have tasked my assistant director on Superior Donuts at Sing Sing with keeping a rehearsal journal; if we were working at a theatre outside the prison’s walls, he might be writing blog posts for the company’s website regarding the progress of rehearsals. He has started to find a nifty balance between a documentary voice…
I was surprised, schooled and humbled by casting Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts, which I am directing under the auspices of Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. It was not unlike casting a grad school production in the sense that it wasn’t about casting the best man for each role, per se,…
“There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.” – Ansel Adams “”The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.” – Edward Steichen They’re your calling card, actors. They are your ticket through the door. Very often, they are the difference between being seen and…
[This post originally appeared on www.2amtheatre.com, which is a very cool place to appear.] Collation line. Apparatus. Strip of terror. Whatever you call it, it’s that somewhat inscrutable line or two of apparently Enigma code between the text and the annotations, particularly in a modern edition of, say, Shakespeare. It might seem irrelevant or irretrievably…
In early 2010, Jeff Glaser directed a production of Starting Over, written by a group of incarcerated men at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison just north of New York City. I partnered with Jeff as something more than an acting coach, something very like a co-director, but it was…
Overview The most striking thing to me about John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt is that it scans. As in scansion. I don’t know what Shanley was thinking when he wrote it, but as I read and reread the play in preparation for rehearsals, I could feel the pauses. I could feel the muscular intensity not merely…
“Sir, / You speak a language that I understand not”.
Overview This was my third time directing Twelfth Night. Artistic Director Grant Mudge threw down two especial challenges: stage the play using ‘original practices’ and with only five actors. Modeled on the Actors from the English Stage concept, Richmond Shakespeare annually stages several of their winter season productions with five actors, so that in addition…
Overview In September 2006, Jon Kimbell approached me about co-directing A Christmas Carol with him at North Shore Music Theater this season. North Shore has been producing Carol for the past 18 seasons, and Jon felt that the production had gotten both a bit stale and a bit adrift from the story, that some musical…
Overview Amy de Lucia first approached me with a copy of Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Fräulein Else in 1999, while we were working on How I Learned to Drive in Bangor, ME. Amy said she felt sure that there was a play in there, if only she could figure out how to unearth it. After I…
Prologue While I was pursuing my M.A. at the Shakespeare Institute, I studied with Dr. John Jowett, who has done a tremendous amount of work on attribution studies in general, and the relationship between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton in particular. I was particularly intrigued by his scholarship with regard to Measure for Measure, and the…
My program notes When this play was first produced, the British theatrical impresario Ivor Brown wrote, “Within a few years, the student of the drama will be sitting in complete bewilderment before the text of Private Lives, wondering what on earth those fellows in 1930 saw in so flimsy a trifle.” Despite summary dismissal by…
Prologue Execution of Justice ran from January 28 trough February 8, 2004 on the Babcock Stage at Pioneer Theatre, in Salt Lake City, Utah. The acting company was comprised of students in the Actor Training Program at the University of Utah; not only did they embrace George Moscone and Harvey Milk, who died before most…
Prologue I am only the second person in the world to direct Humble Boy, having served as associate director to John Caird on the American premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club in the spring of 2003. John is an extraordinarily generous mentor; he encouraged me to explore the differences between our interpretations and to direct my…
“It’s down to me, yes it is The way she does just what she’s told Down to me, the change has come She’s under my thumb Ah, ah, say it’s alright.” ***** “I will be kind, won’t be so cruel, I will be sweet, I will be true, Because of you, a brand new start,…
Don’t forget about the sex American master director Stephen Wadsworth reminded me that As You Like It is “not necessarily a play about love but about self-realization through exile.” British director David Leveaux, by way of advising me, said: “Don’t forget about the sex.” I kept both of these extremely sound observations in mind as…
Pieces is a very personal exploration of very public events. Pieces is a soldier’s story; a young woman’s search for hope as she journeys from drama school in New York City to military service in the Israeli desert; from peace to shattered pieces in the wake of Itzhak Rabin’s assassination and as she struggles to…
The particular challenge I worked to tell the stories of the play as truthfully and as clearly as we can, but I also wanted to celebrate the innate theatricality of the play. We examined every irregularity in the scansion, every short verse line, every shared verse line, every transition from verse to prose: what is…
My program notes A love story and an authentic moral contradiction, How I Learned to Drive challenges our definitions of family love and romantic love; it blurs the boundaries between right and wrong. Paula Vogel says, “We receive great love from the people who harm us.” Drive dramatizes the great gifts that L’il Bit receives…
My program notes Faithful love. Mistaken identity. Lost children. Separated lovers. Magic potions. Wicked stepmothers. Exhausting and frightening journeys through the wilderness. War with the Romans. Reconciliation. Forgiveness. Just your basic fairy, uh —Shakespeare. Only it isn’t. Basic. Cymbeline was one of the last plays that William Shakespeare wrote. Only The Winter’s Tale and The…
Reviews Peter Filichia, TheaterWeek: “When you go theatregoing, take in at least one off-off-Broadway show, for “The Small Stem” has its many charms, too… no theatre does it better than the Westside Repertory — For a while, it appeared that I’d have to stand. And, based on what I saw of their The Voice of…
[This post originally appeared on www.2amtheatre.com, which is a very cool place to appear.] “Theatre inspires me.” “Theatre teaches me about myself, and helps me to understand why other people do what they do.” “Theatre relaxes me.” “Theatre teaches me empathy.” “Everyone in my life was a backstabber or a deceiver. I never knew what…
[This post originally appeared on www.2amtheatre.com, which is a very cool place to appear.] Last week, I coached an actor who had a big audition this past weekend. It was of the ‘bring two contrasting pieces’ variety. She came to me a little later in her process than I would have liked: I didn’t get…
In collaboration with performers Frank Bradley and Seana Lee Wyman, I founded Some OTHER Shakespeare in the Park. Between 1996 and 1997, we produced and I directed Much Ado about Nothing in Bryant Park (behind the main New York Public Library) and Twelfth Night in Madison Square Park (across from the Flatiron Building). I began…
Five Women… grapples with questions about the nature of friendship and sexual relationships for generation which was born in the wake of the sexual revolution and which has come of age in the era of AIDS. As they watch two of their peers celebrate what looks to be a less than promising union, five women…
Amy Reiter,, Backstage: “Some off-off-Broadway theatres could learn a thing or two from Westside Repertory Theatre. . . [Fanny’s First Play] is well directed, acted and designed to boot. Director Kathleen Powers has assembled a first-rate cast . . . we have more good Shavian drama to look forward to.” John Attanas, oobr: “The Westside…
[I wrote this essay as part of my graduate work at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.] “Surely we’re trying to find out at the beginning what we mean by ‘shrew’. Supposing we said ‘shrew’ equals ‘noisy one’. Along comes a man to tame the noisy one. And for almost five acts we never hear from…
[I wrote this essay as part of my graduate work at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.] Harley Granville-Barker’s dramaturgical criticism has transformed our collective perception of Shakespeare’s plays. Full stop. Once he had completed his work as a director and as an analyst, it would no longer be defensible to consider Shakespeare’s plays as literary…