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 that "I can both identify with and not identify with. That's the challenge. Like Peter, I understand what it's like to have a vision and then try to make it happen. I don't identify, however, with his bullying methods. I know when enough is enough."
Shea prepares for his nightly emotional rollercoaster by "carefully re-reading the play before each performance. I do physical and vocal warm-ups and yoga. I also crawl around behind the stage sweeping and cleaning up. I want to go onstage feeling proletarian and unwashed."
Onstage, his private exercises continue. "When the play starts, I'm reading the Chinese Book of Changes [the audience can't see that]. Peter is searching for answers. I believe he has just read, "Don't Waste Time on Trivial Pursuits,' when there's a knock on his door and the playwright enters. He sees her presence as part of a fateful design and everything flows from that."

Unusual Beginnings
The son of a teacher-cum-principal-cum-school superintendent, Shea recalls having dual ambitions as a youngster; indeed, he was torn between becoming-improbably enough-an artist or a priest. "I went to Catholic school, I was an altar boy, I spoke Latin, and thought being in an order was very brave. At the same time I painted, wrote poetry, and played the piano. I also played track, football, and baseball."
Shea gave up the idea of joining the priesthood during a summer in Nantucket, his senior year in high school. "I discovered sex, drugs, and transcendental meditation." At Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine-he was admitted on a debating-football scholarship-he majored in political science, thinking he'd serve as a diplomat. "I liked the idea of being paid to travel."
The turning point occurred in his sophomore year when he played Benedick in the college's production of "Much Ado About Nothing." He was hooked and switched his major to theatre. "For me, theatre was the perfect synthesis of everything I had done up until that point."
Following graduation, Shea was accepted as an M.F.A. acting student in Yale's School of Drama and after one year of "hating it" moved into the directing department. For starters, he recalls, the most interesting teachers at Yale-like the late novelist Jerzy Kozinski, set designer Ming Cho Lee, film critic Stanley Kaufman, and film directors Arthur Penn and Sidney Lumet-were not available to the acting students. "The acting students' lives were totally prescribed and studying with those artists was not included."
More serious were some of the acting teachers Shea encountered. "I was tortured," he says frankly. "One of the instructors, in particular, was malicious and sadistic. I wanted to leave. Robert Brustein, who was the dean at the time, didn't want me to leave. He said he'd make a deal with me. It was OK with him if I majored in directing as long as I continued to act for him in the Yale Rep and the Yale cabaret. And I did."
Still, when Shea graduated Yale-directing degree in hand-he launched his career as an assistant director at the Chelsea Theatre. His stint at the Chelsea serendipitously brought him back to acting. Indeed, it's the stuff of fairy-tales.
"I was helping to cast the play, "Yentl,' and part of my job was to read with the actors who were auditioning," Shea remembers. "Director Bob Kalfin who was watching me read finally said, "I think you are my lead,' fired me as his assistant, and 500 actors later, I was cast in the part and headed to Broadway."
For his Broadway debut, he earned a Theatre World Award. More stage work followed, including A.R. Gurney's "American Days" (Drama Desk nomination), "Long Day's Journey Into Night" (Joseph Jefferson Award nomination), and most recently, "How I Learned to Drive" (with Molly Ringwald). Among his 35 films are starring roles in Costa-Gavras' "Missing," and Alan Alda's comedy, "A New Life." On TV, he starred in "Baby M" (for which he garnered an Emmy) and in "Kennedy," starring Martin Sheen, among many other TV productions.
Shea has been one of the fortunate few, working steadily as an actor for the past 25years-plus. Still, there have been some dry periods, not that he didn't put them to good use, returning to writing and directing.

Creative Energies
"I was living in L.A. and for six months, there was a creative downturn [translation: he was unemployed as an actor]. What do you do with your energies when you're not acting?" he asks rhetorically. "When I started writing I had a reason to get up each day, and for the first time, I was not at the mercy of some producer. Yes, once you start submitting your scripts (or films) you are at the mercy of others, of course. But at least during the writing phase, you're in control of your day-to-day destiny."
He stresses that he doesn't write just to give himself parts, although the kind of scripts he likes to write are also the kind he enjoys acting in. "Certain themes interest me: love, death, loyalty, betrayal. And I find myself wanting to write about characters who have to run an emotional gauntlet in order to achieve a bitter truth at the end."
His first feature film, "Southie," which he co-wrote and directed, went on to win Best Independent Film at last year's Seattle's Film Festival. Distributed by Lion's Gate, "Southie" describes a family reunion, awash in dysfunction, at a wedding in Boston's South End. As noted, Shea's next film, which he wrote, will direct, and star in is "Junkie Priest" " I never became a priest. But now I'll play one."
At the moment, however, his thoughts are focused on "The Director" and his hope that it will talk to audiences from all walks of life, not only those in the arts. "Tyrants who believe the ends justify the means can exist in any business: the exacting doctor in a teaching hospital or the bottom-line-oriented corporate chairman."
Having said that, he admits the guru in the arts is treading a more delicate balance than the businessman precisely because the arts are a grayer, more ambiguous area. Unlike the business tyrant in search of the bottom line, the director's response to whether the actor is scoring is subjective. And his disciples are in a heightened state of vulnerability. After all, their beings are on display. The emotional risks are greater, Shea acknowledges.
"When you put yourself in the hands of a director like Peter, you're sublimating yourself, and have to trust it's for the greater good. You obviously hope it will open career doors and, if nothing else, make you a better actor. But you may not always be sure. As a result you can easily find yourself in a whirlpool of hope and insecurity."
Considering Peter, Shea says, "He is a controversial and ambiguous figure. I hope audiences will see that he can be well-meaning and mad, doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and the right things for the wrong reasons. I hope that at the end when the actors abandon Peter, the audience wonders if they'll come back. I believe they will return."
What a bone-chilling thought! q


"To me, a good director is one who creates an atmosphere of trust where actors feel free to fail without fear of being belittled."

John Shea