What does a theater director do when the stage lights are dark? That’s been a tough question all year. But this past week, I finally had an opportunity to use my skills. I volunteered at a mass vaccination site, run by the Virginia Health Department. I’m not a nurse, so I couldn’t give shots, but […]
I’m curious whether other people set themselves these sorts of experiments or challenges. I’d love to hear what artists you’ve taken the time to become a completist in.
Those who know my work well know how I feel about actors. The short version: Actors are the core of my work. I live for actors. I love actors. Actors, as a group, are hard working, collaborative, innovative, patient, kind, empathetic, generous, creative, and practical. There is no one else I would rather work with. […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about the gap between what people expect of a director and what I am, when I show up in the room. I’m thinking about this especially because I recently was writing an application where I had to answer, “How do you execute your artistic vision?” and everything about that question […]
Tomorrow night, the online production of Measure for Measure that I put together with the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company will be available on their YouTube channel. You can check out the event here. I’m excited to have finally had the chance to dig into this text with actors. I think I proposed it a year […]
I’ve been into preordering books lately. By the time they show up, I’ve usually forgotten about them. It’s like a present from my past self. Which is to say that I had forgotten entirely about Working on a Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell, until it showed up at my doorstep. Once I […]
You know when you see something over and over again, and you just want to ask if other people see it too? That’s where I am today. During These Challenging Times, one of the things I have appreciated the most, in terms of content provided by theaters, is the honest, direct, behind-the-magic conversations that they’ve […]
We had the world premiere of Sperm Donor Wanted last night. It was really fun. Because we had attended various live online theater events where an actor’s mic dropped in the middle of the show or the stream cut out for somebody, we decided to pre-record the show the night before. We premiered it on […]
Today is the one-year anniversary of one of my favorite days of my whole life. We did Antony and Cleopatra at the Rose. It was the culmination of a journey I had been on since I directed my first production of that play, sixteen years earlier. Although it was a good production, it didn’t match […]
One of the most exciting developments in the way people create theater that has happened in the course of my career as a professional director is a shift in professional standards around how we talk about and work with actors’ bodies. I’m old enough to remember a high school director telling a boy who was […]