After a week of previews, we opened the show on Monday night. By the time you’re reading this, the reviews will have come in.  The relationship between a critic and director is quite a unique one.  In this case, I have put 25 years of my life into understanding, planning, editing and creating this work … all to have critics develop an opinion, steering the minds of potential audiences, mostly and typically based on only one evening’s performance. [Read more...]

This week was tech week. The process is a slow one. I am continuing to work with the actors while the designers work on the bigger picture of the show. [Read more...]

We have been running Strange Interlude this week. Our first run was last Wednesday, a week ago. We ran through it again on Thursday and another time this weekend. I am very happy with the progress we have been able to make. As many directors know, this can be a make or break juncture for a show, a time when it’s vital for the ensemble to gather a head of steam going into the final stretch. This week, there have been some long nights and hard days. They will only get longer, but such is life in the theatre. [Read more...]

It’s week five. We just keep marching through the play like Sherman to Atlanta. All the way to Georgia!

Every day we fill in more of the picture. Each scene now has a real shape. I feel free to fine-tune – focus the actors on maintaining their diagonals, throw out old ideas because they no longer look realistic within the flow of the play and so on. [Read more...]

To perform Eugene O’Neill, an actor has to be ruthlessly honest—with themself as much as with the play. It can be a tricky thing to sculpt for a director, and for the actor, it can exact a terrible toll. I once directed José Ferrer, the great actor and matinee idol, famous in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s as the Cyrano de Bergerac of the American stage. [Read more...]

Last week I discussed the careful editing process which Eugene O’Neill practically demands from his theatrical collaborators. Like all of O’Neill’s plays, Strange Interlude is profound and intuitive and also a little over-written. This week, I’ve finished tableworking the play with the actors and we’re on our feet now, continuing to explore.[1] The first week of staging can be a complicated time, and we’ve been taking it slow, learning carefully about the play. We make new discoveries every day. [Read more...]