WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT ... >>>

I'm always skeptical when someone tells me he or she has directed dozens or hundreds of shows. It's too much work. Where'd they possibly find the time? I have an MFA in directing, and I've managed less than a dozen full-length productions. Since it takes me half a year to assemble a show, I have to really want to do it. The script has to affect me on some physical, visceral level: the jokes have to make me laugh out loud. The sad bits have to make me cry, the shouty bits have to make me angry, and the sex scenes should...

Look, I don't have to spell it out. The point is, the script has to be more than just clever, though I certainly have no objection to cleverness per se. And there can't be a role in it for me, or I'd be more interested in acting that role than directing it, which wouldn't be fair to the actor I cast.

It turns out my short list of criteria is a surprisingly effective filter, screening out 98 percent of all the plays I ever read. Yet there are still a few waiting out there, so I want to lay claim to them now:

Bug and The Credeaux Canvas are terrific scripts that require nudity, which is tough in a small town or even a large one. Try convincing an actor to get naked for minutes on end, only feet from an audience of strangers and friends, in the unforgiving light of the Midnight Sun Performance Space. It ain't easy. Also, Mark Alford directed a thrilling production of Bug just last year for Riot to Follow Productions at Evergreen, so that one's off the table for seasons to come.

Tracy Letts, the author of Bug, also wrote Superior Donuts, an outstanding dramedy about urban life. I have no idea how I'd cast it, but Harlequin should take a serious look all the same. If an audience can get past the first few minutes of the play, it'll fall in love with Letts's characters. I guarantee it.

I love Gore Vidal's The Best Man. Unfortunately, it's a topical piece about presidential candidates written in 1960, so every political reference would have to be updated. I'm pretty sure that's illegal, which gives David Mamet's November the edge. It's also about a presidential race, and it's way funnier than Vidal's take.

Sherlock's Last Case plays to my love of the great detective, but it requires an expensive set I can't afford and wouldn't know how to build.

I will direct the musical Chess someday, but I want to use my adaptation of the Sydney version, which is totally illegal in the U.S. (It's a copyright issue. Don't ask. It makes no sense to anyone, including its writers.) I love Randy Newman's Faust, too, but I'm not even sure it has a publisher. Why? No idea.

Then there are the classics: J.B. by Archibald Macleish (a retelling of the Biblical Job story), Anthony Burgess's adaptation of Oedipus the King, perhaps a full production of Hamlet. Put those on your schedule without calling me, local theater companies, and I warn you right now:

You shall deal with my unholy wrath.