Bartlett Sher is my dear friend and the younger brother I always wanted. He also happens to be a genius. He grew up in a large, loud, crazy Catholic-Jewish family in the San Francisco of the 1970s, and that has informed everything he has ever done in the theater. He thrives on spontaneity, looseness, and occasional insanity, and then, because of his acute intelligence and vigorous Jesuit education, he creates order and sense. He can throw a whirling dervish out of whirl, to quote from a Rodgers and Hammerstein show he hasn’t directed, and will then re-assemble the pieces so that the dervish will whirl more effectively than ever.
Most people who go to the theater don’t really know what a good director does. They assume a show is well directed if the actors can be heard and the scenery is pretty. Indeed, good theater direction is hard to describe because the process of putting on a show changes from project to project, and the responsibility for the show’s success or failure or anything in between basically falls to the one person audiences know nothing about: the director.
Yet all great directors have a method and a set of principles that they apply to everything they do, no matter how varied. Here is what Bart believes in: Everything starts with preparation, research, and study. Then continues with the actors, exploration, and discovery. Sitting around a table in rehearsal asking questions, endless questions. Then putting the show up on its feet. Staging. Re-staging. Constantly changing. Bart can be far along in the rehearsal process or even in the preview period and he will still be “exploring.” This can be infuriating, but you know that it is the right thing to do because with time (and it’s all about enough time) everything becomes better. Bart understands and believes in “process.”
Someone once said that great art can only come from chaos, and if that is true, then Bart is a really great artist. He goes into rehearsal seeing the whole picture, but he insists on pulling it apart, making a glorious mess, and eventually creating order again. He knows that the picture in his head must be illuminated by every single detail onstage—every acting moment, every prop, every note of music.
His greatest strength as a director is his insistence on telling the story simply and clearly. That is the North Star that guides him all along the way. But, God forbid, he is not above the occasional breathtaking coup de théâtre—the unexpected reveal of the orchestra as they played the South Pacific overture, The King and I ship that sails right into the audience, the tenement wall that suddenly rises, offering a glimpse of a better world to the young hero of Awake and Sing!
While we’re on the subject of Clifford Odets, I should add that Bart is intensely political: racism, the education of women, the class system, freedom, human dignity … all these concerns find their way into his work.
Bart is the busiest of busy bees. He keeps up with everyone, juggles 10 projects at once, flies all over the world to check up on those projects, and devotes a lot of time to—yes, just like his plays—creating order in the life of his family (talented wife, adorable daughters, dog, cat, books, pots and pans, plants, paintings), who live in a tiny topsy-turvy East Side apartment much like the Jellyby family in Bleak House.
I told Bart that I was afraid my article about him was too solemn and that I needed to make it zippier and funnier. He protested, “But making theater is solemn work.” Indeed.
He is a director who is equal parts conductor and choreographer, whose work is driven by storytelling, politics, and history. His artistry has raised the bar for all of us who work in the theater. He leads and we eagerly follow.
