For me, choosing a project is all about sharing an artistic vision with another artist. I almost always find myself working on a production because I want to work with someone else already attached to it. Sometimes it's an actor, a producer, or a theatre company that is the genesis for a production. However it starts, I hop on board, join the vision that already exists, and start the work.

Sometimes, though, a project begins in my own creative imagination. I read new and old scripts voraciously, hunting for plays that inspire my imagination and address a universal truth of the human condition. Sometimes I read a new script and my mind immediately teems with possibilities; Three Miracles and a Giant by Peggy Stafford is a recent example.

Other times, I find inspiration while watching a less-than-exciting production of a classic. Just a few weeks ago, I was watching a fairly pedestrian version of Hamlet and suddenly began having creative visions about a set design and character choices totally unrelated to the stage in front of me. Hamlet, along with Macbeth and several other plays, now lives in the little basket of shows that I am itching to direct. I periodically mention these personal-project plays to the producers, designers, and actors that I know, seeing if my vision strikes a chord with anyone else. Occasionally, something clicks in an exciting moment of shared imagination, and the germination of a new project begins. It's that seed of excitement with another person that always begins a new project for me and gives it life and energy.

 

Well, I tend to create my own projects, and that makes it easier for me to choose. When I read other people's material, I have a harder time — I'm getting better at it — but I have a hard time judging its merits. My brain works in such a specific way that I found it easier to just create the material that I direct, so that's mostly what I've been doing. The first thing that I look at is the characters and how real the dialogue is, and, obviously, I'm attracted to comedy. I'm not interested in, like, frat comedies — and I'm not judging them one way or the other; it's just not something that I think I would be able to help realize or have much to add to.

As broad as Jerri Blank [the lead character in Strangers] is, I think she's grounded in some sort of truth, at least for me, and that's what I'm drawn to. At Second City, even though we created broad characters, our goal was always to try to find some sort of truth in them. So that's what I would look for in a project, and also I'm attracted to something I haven't seen before, something unique.

 

I have never really, over the years, chosen any projects I directed; the projects have chosen me. It is a phenomenon that I still am awed by. It's as if the universe sends me stories and themes that I have experienced or am in the process of experiencing. Here is a recent example: When I was first approached to do Yellowman at the Fountain Theatre, I turned it down. I felt at first that I really didn't want to tackle the subject of the identity wound. A year later, I was approached again and accepted. I realized the journey I was taking demanded that I confront my own questions of identity. The show allowed me to confront my past demons, It was an emotional and spiritual purging.

It was a welcome gift when I got the call from the [John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) to come open their new Family Theater with Alice, an urban fairy tale written by Whoopi Goldberg and adapted by Kim Hines. I got to play and be a child again. It was a renewal and affirmation after Yellowman.

Projects choose you, in the same way that people find each other. Of the six movies I've made, five of them grew directly out of relationships that I had with either another writer, actor, or producer. Getting those projects made is always tricky, but the collective passion and vision has been what has seen them through.

The Big Day was a wedding comedy conceived by an actor-writer couple that came to me because they liked my first movie [Trailer: The Movie]. I worked with them on the script, and then we were able to attach Julianna Marguties for the female lead, [and] the financing came together shortly afterward. My most recent picture, Islander, came about as a result of a collaboration with actor-writer Tom Hildreth, who I had cast in a play I did in New York, Mr. Smith Gets a Hustler, which was also made into a microbudget movie. He brought me to the island of Vinalhaven [in Maine] with the notion of making a movie in and about that place. We labored for years writing a script that played to both our strengths — he as actor, me as director — and also took advantage of other people I had made a few projects with along the way: producers Melissa Davis and Forrest Murray, [director of photography] Dan Coplan, editor Marc Jozefowicz, and Billy Mallery, [who did the score). Together we worked as an ensemble with many actors from the Classical Theatre Lab — Philip Baker Hall, Jimmy Parks, Ron Canada — to create a very homegrown movie.

[That's] a long-winded way of saying I've worked with a lot of friends: like-minded, independent, passionate artists with a common goal of putting on a show.