Directing: my own plays

For more than two decades, beginning with “Captain Jack’s Revenge” in 1970 at La Mama, I directed the first productions of all my own plays, not because I necessarily wanted to or thought it was a good thing, but because I was unable to find a director who would be faithful to my intentions in writing them. I was well aware that another creative eye could be valuable. But Jacques Levy had radically altered “The Next Thing,” and the director Ellen Stewart proposed for “Captain Jack” had a different idea of the play than mine. A New York revival of “Cowgirl Ecstasy” was altered beyond recognition and a hideous disaster. Besides, I love directing. I love working with actors, and there is nothing I enjoy more than directing a good rehearsal. But it was difficult in later years to fit in the obsessive demands of directing a play with other responsibilities. So I was overjoyed to find the young director Maurice Lord, who did a lovely job with “The Dinner Show” (see Short Plays) in Santa Barbara in 1996. His youthful energy gave me a way back into the theatre, and we started a theatre company together the following year, calling it Genesis West. After I left Santa Barbara in 2003, Maurie revived Genesis West, incorporated it as a nonprofit, and continues to produce and direct plays, some of which I have lit. When I went back to do “Bad Dog” in 2007, he did not want to produce it so I started a new company, Re-genesis, which continues to be active in Oregon.

Plays by Michael Smith directed by the author: