When bringing you play to life for the first time in a small self-produced production, it is important to make sure you have the right director, who shares your vision, and who will lead the actors to make the right choices.

As a director, I always look to fulfill the playwright's intention. “Are the choices we are making with this production congruent with what the playwright wants?”

I never make the production about me. A director who makes a production about HIS AMAZING "DIRECTORIAL-NESS" is not serving anyone.

And never serving the play.

I once gave one of my plays to a director to direct. It was a monologue play with 10 actors that I had directed myself many times and it was always great fun for the actors and the audience alike.

So I sat down and gave this director some concepts and principles about “the play in production” that ALWAYS worked. I also said, "Of course, you can do whatever you like, but I know from experience these principles work."

4 weeks later, I attended the production and I was mortified. The director and the actors made all the wrong CHOICES about the material. They added goofy character mannerisms in monologues that needed to be real. They made "tiny" choices in some monologues when “BIG” choices would make it work. And the director had a CONCEPT! She tried to somehow make it an ensemble piece by having all the actors on stage all the time, which only stole focus from the person doing the monologue and limited the actors by not allowing them to change costumes and wigs to create different characters!

It was mind-boggling. The choices made by the director and the actors actually made my writing look bad, sound bad, and seem sophomoric, when I knew from directing the play more than 20 times, that my play was brilliant! And the audiences always loved it!

So if you are going to do any sort of self-produced production, (All playwrights should workshop and develop their work,) make sure you are on the same page with your director. Make sure she wants to bring your play to life and not her CONCEPT of your play to life. And make sure he understands the power of making the right choices for the characters and the material.

Interview directors extensively. Find out what they value in theatre, what they value in life, and find out if they are on the same page as you as to your intentions with your play.

I don't want you to experience what I did. My stomach CHURNS when I think about it.

Thank God, I had directed my show before, so I knew it worked! A director conceptualizing and making the wrong choices about your play could actually make you believe your play is not good, when simply some idea was pasted over your play, and the wrong choices were made about your material.

Interview extensively. And interview some more.

Elicit a director's values, and learn everything you can about him or her.

Find the right director fit, and watch your play blossom!

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