He's what might be referred to as a Renaissance director. An artist, leader, and visionary, with fingers in the pots of music, drama, comedy, and opera, Jay Paul Skelton's distinctive directorial stamp can be found in theaters across Chicago.
Recently, Skelton directed The Last Sunday in June at Bailiwick and How Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Happened for Hell in a Handbag Productions at the Theatre Building. Both shows were near and dear to gay audiences' hearts, but Skelton is also at work on a French opera double bill at the Chicago Cultural Center (Ravel's The Bewitched Child and Eric Satie's Genevieve de Brabant), opening Aug. 3, and a new musical at Live Bait called Camp Nimrod for Girls, opening Aug. 20. As if that weren't enough for any workaholic, Skelton is also at the helm for The Magic Flute, a family production of the Mozart opera at Ravinia. Performances begin on Aug. 21.
Skelton's resume boasts a diverse and accomplished bill, including Leonard Bernstein's Candide for the Chicago Cultural Center, The Marriage of Figaro and The Romeo and Juliet Story for Opera Theatre Highland Park, Death on a Pink Carpet at Live Bait, and Coyote Pretty at Improv Olympic. His work has been seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the San Francisco Fringe Festival. He received the 2001 Achievement Award Scholarship for Young Directors from the National Theatre Conference and was named a Finalist/First Alternate for the 2000-2002 NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors. He has amassed several After Dark awards and Jeff recommendations and has directed at more than a dozen venues in the city. A native of Massachusetts, Jay received his M.F.A. from The Theatre School at DePaul University and is currently on the teaching staff of the Actors' Center of Chicago and Act One Studios.
Recently, I had a chance to catch the director as he caught his breath and sent it my way to answer a few questions.
RR: Currently, you're working on a French opera double bill for the Chicago Cultural Center, a production of The Magic Flute for Ravinia, and a new musical comedy, Camp Nimrod for Girls. All of these open in August. How do you juggle three productions at once and have a personal life? Or do you have a personal life?
JPS: Creative scheduling, flexible fellow artists and a boyfriend with the patience of a saint all contribute to keeping my professional and personal lives balanced. It can be a challenge, of course, but it almost always works out fine.
RR: Is this the kind of pace that energizes you or puts you in danger of burn out?
JPS: Both. I'm always grateful to be a working director in Chicago and a full plate of projects tells me that I must be doing something right. I also believe in the adage that work begets work. In contrast, this past spring was an extraordinarily busy period for me in all aspects of my life and I found myself mentally and physically exhausted by the time my last production opened. I thankfully had the opportunity to run away to Cape Cod for two weeks with my boyfriend and my equilibrium has been happily restored!
RR: Of the three productions mentioned, what do you like most about each and what do you like least? Why?
JPS: The French Opera Double Bill allows me the opportunity to work with a group of extremely smart and talented people while tackling a short yet very challenging opera called The Bewitched Child by Maurice Ravel. One of the difficult aspects of this particular project is having only a week and a half to stage a 30-person opera!
The Magic Flute is simply one of my favorite operas and having the chance to stage this revised family version in the Martin Theatre at Ravinia is such an honor. My only issue with this project is that we're not performing the entire opera. Call me greedy!
I've always enjoyed working at Live Bait, one of the smartest and most vibrant theaters in Chicago, and Camp Nimrod for Girls is no exception. I'm working with a host of old and new friends on this project and the process has been deliriously euphoric, incredibly frustrating and never, never less than engaging. My current issue with this project is that we begin performances in only two weeks!
RR: I noticed that you'll begin a tour of duty as a visiting professor of directing at Notre Dame this fall. You also teach in Chicago at the Actors‚ Center of Chicago and Act One Studios. How does teaching compare to directing? If someone said you could only do one or the other, which would you choose? Why?
JPS: I find that teaching is essentially showing students how to make a choice while directing is inspiring others to share in your choice. I find that teaching informs my directing and vice versa to such an extent that the combination is essential to my creative life. If someone forced me to choose between teaching and directing, I'm afraid I would make the same choice as the main character in Rudyard Kipling's short story Shooting an Elephant. I'd probably walk away from both.
RR: Can you tell me a little bit about your process as a director? Do you approach things in a similar way each time or does the material dictate how you'll do things?
I've been challenging myself over the past year by choosing projects that demand different approaches. It keeps me from becoming complacent. For example, this past winter I directed a short play called Yes, We Have No Bananas for the Young Playwrights Festival at Pegasus Players. The play was a non-linear crazy quilt of riffs on the life of the founder of Dadaism and called for a very different style of staging. I had recently been introduced to the acting training method known as Viewpoints and felt that I could apply its techniques to this short play. I knew enough about this method to be dangerous but not enough to feel that I was in complete control of the process. The result was three weeks of rehearsals where I never knew what result would come out of any given rehearsal. It was nerve-wracking yet curiously freeing at the same time. The final production was very different from anything I had yet directed and was happily well received by audiences.
RR: Your resume includes several gay plays (although I hate that term; plays are usually without sexual orientation, right?), most recently directing The Last Sunday in June as part of Bailiwick's Pride series and How Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Happened for Hell in a Handbag. How do you think your sensibilities as a gay man inform your directing? Or doesn't it make any difference? What can you bring to the table in productions like these that a straight director could not?
JPS: I believe that any director worth his or her salt is sensitive to what any given play demands no matter what its subject matter or style. I think perhaps the only heightened sensibility I can bring to a production as a gay man is a deep appreciation for outsiders, for those who are different, or for those just outside the norm.
RR: A few years ago, you directed one of my favorite original Chicago plays, Death on a Pink Carpet, about the lives and loves of everyone's favorite Madam X, Lana Turner. What drew you to that material?
JPS: The primary draw was a combination of working with Live Bait and Edward Thomas-Herrera. Live Bait's production of BUK was one of the first plays I attended when I arrived in Chicago in 1990 and I was impressed with the intelligence and inventiveness of the production. I've been a fan ever since. Edward and I were roommates for about two years in the mid-1990s when he began writing performance poetry. I remember one day he asked me to listen to something he had just written and my jaw dropped as he stood reading from his sheet of paper in our livingroom. I've been a fan ever since. So when Edward called to see if I would be interested in working on Death on a Pink Carpet at Live Bait, I felt as if I were fulfilling two dreams at once.
RR: You do a lot of opera and musical theater. Do you find that more challenging than—pardon the phrase—straight drama or comedy? Do you have a preference for one type of theater over another?
JPS: I found directing opera to be very challenging at first because of the many traditional customs it carries with it as an art form. I was very lucky that my first opera production included a conductor and cast of singers who were both patient with my learning process and willing to break a rule or two. I don't have a preference for one type of theater or another since I truly believe that, no matter the tools being used, all art forms share in the same search for enlightenment about the human condition.
RR: What do you find most exciting about Chicago theater? Most problematic? Is Chicago where you want to stay and work or do you have plans to move on? Is that too nosy?
JPS: I find the variety and vibrancy of the Chicago theater community to be its most attractive characteristic. There are always so many different productions and an equal amount of styles of production to choose from in this city. I remember when I first arrived in Chicago not knowing where to start since I had so many options. I think the development that has bothered me the most over the past few years has been the focus on downtown Loop theatres and their refurbishment. I understand I may be biased, but I believe that the reputation that Chicago theater enjoys as a major theater city is powered by the constant activity of its off-Loop theater community and not by its touring houses downtown. I would have liked to have seen some of those city resources diverted to the many deserving small or mid-sized companies who struggle to keep their doors open yet continue to contribute to the city's theatrical reputation.
RR: Amen! And what's next for Jay Paul Skelton?
JPS: Professionally speaking, I begin teaching at Notre Dame at the end of August and, being my first university teaching position, I'm trying to prepare as best as possible. Personally, my boyfriend and I are in the formative stages of planning a humungous shindig for our tenth anniversary this fall.
RR: Congratulations. Do you ever get a chance to rest? What do you like to do outside the theater when you have time off? What Chicago theater companies do you admire and would want to go see when you are off?
JPS: I'm a huge fan of naps these days! I don't care for soda or coffee, so a 15-20 minute nap is usually all I need to get back into the swing of things. I tend to read a lot when I have time off or try to go back to the East Coast and visit my family. My boyfriend and I joined a couple of friends recently to check out Millennium Park on an evening I didn't have rehearsal. My favorite thing to do when I have a free moment is to find a neighborhood coffee shop, have some iced tea and watch the world go by.
