FACE TO FACE: John Shea - Playing a Wounded Idealist

In Nancy Hasty's play "The Director," a work that could easily be dubbed, "The Theatre's Heart of Darkness," actor John Shea plays the title role, a tyrannical, borderline personality, who truly believes he is creating cutting edge theatre. Totally disarming (he admits he is a bastard), he manipulates his hapless actors into playing a series of horrific acting exercises that become progressively more deranged and ultimately spin out of control.
Still, Shea will not concede that Peter, his alter ego in "The Director," a play that opened Off-Broadway, at the ArcLight Theatre, Feb. 15, is an abuser (to use current jargon). "Yes, he believes the end justifies the means. But I'm not sure you can call someone abusive if that's not his intention. And I don't think Peter is a sadist, although he flexes his muscles with impunity.
"I see him as a wounded idealist, doing whatever he has to do to fulfill his artistic vision," the 50-ish Springfield, Mass., native emphasizes. "I believe he is gifted. He gets his actors to be real. But his problem is one of degree. It's all or nothing. He has no room for compromise. He is an adrenaline junkie, but has no self-regulator. He can never hold his companies together [indeed, he is working as a janitor] and has no idea why. He has backed himself into a corner. He's crying out for help."
Having cast Peter, a bonafide brute, in a poignant light, the intense Shea-with whom we meet at the ArcLight Theatre before a preview performance-acknowledges that he (Shea) has been traumatized by teachers and directors that resemble Peter. "There's nothing worse than being at the mercy of these people who can fire you from jobs or expel you from school. They browbeat you so much you clam up, and the creative juices shut down.
"I did not use them as the models for this role," Shea remarks. "But they taught me what I didn't want to be as a director. To me, a good director is one who creates an atmosphere of trust where actors feel free to fail without fear of being belittled."

Directing and Acting
Shea is thinking a lot about directing recently and not simply because of his current role. Although, he is best known as an actor-he has appeared in all media and rolled up a host of awards-he has launched a career as a film writer and director.
His next film project, "Junkie Priest," based on the complex life of Father Dan Egan has special meaning to Shea. After all, the beloved priest-one of the first in New York to create halfway houses for junkies and prostitutes-died only hours before our meeting of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at age 86. He had become Shea's personal friend. "I really hoped he would live to see the movie."
Shea points out that he is drawn to dark, complicated, and contradictory characters