What follows are a few of the plays on which I wish to work.  This is by no means an exhaustive list, although it is a fairly representative sample of the kinds of plays that feed me.

Shakespeare particularly excites me because he reveals so many facets of a relationship with just a few words: at the end of Much Ado about Nothing’s IV,i, Beatrice and Benedick, in the wake of Claudio’s humiliation of Hero, are finally able to tell one another of their love. Their punning, playing and provocation are set aside by the gravity of the situation and the intensity of their true feelings for one another. Having seen her cousin shamed by Claudio’s accusations, Beatrice turns to Benedick, immediately on the heels of declaring her love for him, and demands, "Kill Claudio." Less than forty lines later, he agrees. In this brief exchange, we see the playfulness as well as the competitiveness between Beatrice and Benedick, the intensity of the love that they share, their need to give it voice after the brutality of Claudio’s denunciation of Hero, and the depth of their commitment when Benedick promises to challenge his friend at Beatrice’s request. Certainly there are many other playwrights who can do this. But Shakespeare is, through this combination of the beauty of his language and this specificity and intricacy of character, the fragment as well as the pane. His work is the prism through which I begin to see.  

Eventually, I hope to direct every play in the canon, but among the plays I want to direct soon are Titus Andronicus, Measure for Measure, Henry V, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet,  The Two Noble Kinsmen.   I am also particularly interested in directing  the Q1 Hamlet (1603) — taken on its own terms, and even within the canon, this unloved and almost never produced  text offers a different  and more visceral, muscular set of responses to murder and revenge than does the play we think we know.

A hypothetical day in the life, Blood Relations pays a visit to Lizzie Borden one hot afternoon ten years after her acquittal for the murders of her father and stepmother.  The play is both whodunit, but also Lizzie as split subject.  During a game of let's pretend, Lizzie steps back and watches the events of August 4, 1892 play out before her.  She is protagonist, antagonist, housemaid and spectator, all at once.   Blood Relations is its own play, but it reminds me of Martin McDonagh's trilogy (see below) because it demands to know, it explores and examines  what drives a person to violence.

Emily Mann’s Still Life is a play that does violence. The characters visit tremendous violence upon one another, and they have had tremendous violence done to them. Still Life looks at lives in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, but its scope is wider. Mark participated in a war in the strictest sense of that word, but all of the characters are fighting a war. For their emotional selves. For their identities. For the way that human beings are supposed to treat one another as opposed to the ways that human beings often do treat one another. Still Life is an opportunity  to explore the parameters of violence, of war, in personal lives and in public ones.

The challenge of Eugene O'Neill's work is to find both what is strong and redemptive, what is the very kernel of human nature, while also exploring fearlessly the dark crevasses, the pain and the brutality that he has written.  Beyond the Horizon looks at potential, both that tested and that wasted.  It looks at the waste, the diabolical waste of self-sacrifice.  The cost of the waste is beyond all measure.  It is a beautiful, terrible journey; I await it eagerly.

Arcadia is that brilliant combination of the intellectually challenging and the emotionally provocative:  I love a play (or a novel or a piece of music) that breaks my heart at the same time that it encourages my brain to an epiphany, to understand something for the first time, to see something familiar in a new way.

Other Stoppard plays that I would love to direct include Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, and The Real Thing, although David Leveaux's brilliant revival has probably ruined the play for me for the near term:  thrilled to my marrow by his production, I cannot, at the moment, think of a single note to change.

It's amazing to me that Rachel Crothers has practically disappeared off our theatrical map.  Prolific and smart, Ms. Crothers asks good questions about the role of women in America, about the double standards with which our culture is still rife.  Some of the plays are dated now, but there remain powerful pieces of theatre waiting for their next opportunity in her long-neglected work.

I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Irish political theatre and I grew up in an Irish Catholic household.  I learned both Republican fight songs and drinking songs before I could read.  I feel a strong affinity for much in the canon of the Irish theatre, from the works of Lady Gregory through Sean O'Casey to Anne Devlin and Marina Carr.  I look forward to directing more of these plays.

When I saw Beauty Queen of Lenane on Broadway, I was riveted (despite Stephen Wadsworth's claim that it is nothing but a potboiler!).  When I read A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West, I knew that Beauty Queen had only begun to examine the murderous impulse that can grow up inside a trapped or wounded individual, an individual who lacks the means for other forms of expression.  These plays are magical in part because they are full not just of anger and vindictiveness, but also human inconsistency and especially humor.