Role:            Director
Where:        Genesis Theatre Company
Playwright:  Lanford Wilson (adaptation of Home Free)

This was our first play that my wife and I produced together and that was done in Jim Ortleib's space in Chicago across from Steppenwolf.  He rented it because he wouldn't use it in summer because it wasn't safe. It was too hot, structurally it was a hotbox and I said, "oh, I'll rent it, I'll get an air conditioner and we'll be okay."  And I think it was opening night or the night after opening night one of my actresses just clinched up on stage from the heat - loss of salt, too much sweating. And she was just crabbed up in her fingers and fell over.  Luckily, people from Steppenwolf were in the house and they ran over and got their medic, who came over and helped.  The actress was a friend who was very understanding about it - yeah, but it was scary.  That was a pairing of Leonard Melfi''s Birdbath and Lanford Wilson's Home Free.  Lanford Wilson's the one that I directed, I think I directed both of them.. yeah, I did.  I got SLAMMED, the critics SLAMMED me.  Because when you're an actor and you dare direct and produce, they don't take it easy on you, they make you suffer at first.  Then if you make it for a few shows, then they start to think you got some legs.  But in the beginning? BAM.  But Lanford Wilson wrote a play about a brother and sister who are incestuous and mentally handicapped and they are very poor and she's pregnant and they used to bring things home that they find as gifts to each other.  They're like little kids and they're so innocent and so loving and doomed.  At then at the end of the play, she has a birth and dies and there's no medical help. And it's very sad and very spooky and very unsettling.  JM.com 2007