Director juggles two
shows and teaching his craft
By
Robert Feldberg
Daniel
Sullivan is a name that’s going to appear in a lot of theater programs
this season. The director has been working simultaneously on two
off-Broadway shows, has a couple more lined up, and in March is
scheduled to stage a revival on Broadway of Eugene O’Neill’s A
Moon for the Misbegotten. In between, he flies out to
Urbana-Champaign to teach a theater course at the University of
Illinois.
In a
rare free moment, Sullivan spoke about the two productions he’s
currently shuffling between. One is Ancestral Voices, a play
about a family that A.R. Gurney wrote to be performed as a reading. It
opened Oct. 18, and will run Sunday and Monday evenings at the Mitzi
Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center.
Asked
about the staging, Sullivan laughingly said, "There isn’t
any," although that’s not entirely true. The play is similar, in
being a reading, to Gurney’s highly successful two-character Love
Letters, but Sullivan said the new work, with five characters, is
more complex theatrically.
"With
Love Letters," he said, "the actors basically didn’t
have to rehearse. They could just come in and read it, let the words
carry the whole thing. Here, there’s more interaction."
Another
demand on Sullivan is that, like Love Letters, the show will have
an ever-changing cast. (The initial one is headed by Blythe Danner,
Philip Bosco, and Edward Herrmann.)
When not
with Ancestral Voices, Sullivan will be downtown, at the Variety
Arts Theater, staging Dinner With Friends, a comedy about the
effect divorce has on the relationship between two couples. The play,
which began previews Oct. 21 and opens Nov. 4, is by Donald Margulies,
whose works include The Loman Family Picnic and Sight Unseen.
"It
has a subject that interested me," said Sullivan of the new play.
"It’s about friendship, and the stake we put in it."
Although
Sullivan is busy, compared to with his schedule of several years ago he’s
almost loafing. His name may not be high-profile outside the theater
community, but he’s been one of New York’s most highly respected and
successful directors.
He’s
had major Broadway hits in The Heidi Chronicles, The Sisters
Rosensweig, and I’m Not Rappaport, and many distinctive
off-Broadway productions. And he did this while commuting from
Washington State, where, from 1981 to 1997, he was the artistic director
responsible for building the Seattle Repertory Company into a major
regional theater.
"I
think that I grew tired of the constant problem-solving, fighting the
same problems," said Sullivan of leaving the Seattle Rep. He
indicated that as the company grew bigger, his pleasure decreased.
"There
was the job of raising funds, and the 12-months-a-year phone
campaigns," said Sullivan. "It takes an enormous amount of
money to sell subscriptions. It just wasn’t any fun anymore."
One
attraction of running a theater is being able to pick the plays you want
to do.
"For
a long time, I enjoyed the curatorial aspect," said Sullivan,
"choosing projects and directing them." But, he added, the
need to always present a "balanced" season of shows -- and to
plan it so far ahead that sometimes when it came time to do a play, he
found he’d lost his initial enthusiasm for it -- diminished the
pleasure of artistic control.
Fortunately
for Sullivan, the stature he’s achieved has allowed him a good measure
of control in his freelance life. "A lot of the places where I
work, if there’s a play I want to do, I can usually get it done."
Reproduced
with permission from The Record
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