Playwright James Still was recently in Los Angeles working with the Cornerstone Theatre Company on a piece about faith. At this year’s TCG conference, he told a story about getting in a cab to the airport and having a conversation with the cab driver, who was raised Muslim in London. The cabby asked him what his profession was and he told him he wrote for the theatre. The cabby replied, “Ah…the theatre is a place where you can see God.”

I couldn’t agree more. Theatre for me has always been a spiritual experience and one that transcends its appearance as mere “entertainment.”

The late Al Carmines, an ordained minister and visionary ’60s playwright, was eccentric and entertainingly arcane. He once wrote in a letter to The Times in 1989:

“If you want to know how to live, go to church; if you want to know how your life is in its deepest roots, go to the theater.”

As a child actor at the Cleveland Playhouse, I would take classes on Saturdays, and at the end of class I would walk into the central lobby as the crowd was letting out for intermission. The people were buzzing about what they had just seen and I yearned to be one of the actors who were at the source of this excitement and engagement.

As a teen I would perform on the Drury stage. Being part of that near sacred interaction was transformative and inspirational. We would rehearse Molier’s The School for Wives during the day and perform Wilder’s Our Town at night. The prospect of bouncing between styles and playwrights, using skills I acquired from the company of rep actors I so admired, was utter bliss. I knew then what I would do with my life, and in the intervenening 40 seasons I have never veered off course. Later in my career I would direct School for Wives and I worked hard to bring out the darker tones beneath the bright comedy that I remember so vividly from childhood.

When asked by Carrie Kaufman to put cursor to screen about what I think “amazing” theatre is and how we apply that to Northlight, it posed a special challenge, because I am a hydra-headed artist. My sensibilities have been formed as an actor, a director, an artistic director and a producer, creating a prismatic vision, complex and sometimes conflicting. The process is never less than thrilling.

As an actor I instinctively know what it will feel like to play a piece eight times a week. I know, as most actors do, what it will play like on a Tuesday night, versus a Saturday night; how each theatre’s audience is different. As an actor, then, I look for material that gives actors an opportunity to stretch and grow. I am drawn to writing that is verbal and poetic. I look for pieces that require thinking, skilled, instinctive performers, generous in collaboration, unselfish in contribution. I envision what it will be like in the playground of the rehearsal room: actors daring to make outrageous choices, unafraid of looking bad; actors who boldly throw the Frisbee of ideas and emotions back and forth across the room. I look for pieces with actors in mind, and with roles to fill with new, fresh and hungry talents. The actor in me always looks for new influences and steep challenges. Tyrone Guthrie said that even the most skilled of repertory companies could create the magic of the moment three performances out of eight in a week. That is not as optimistic as I would like to believe. It is that magic, that spiritual communion with an audience, that I seek.

As a director, I look for work that will stretch me. I am drawn to work that is idea based, visual and not necessarily linear. I am increasingly passionate about political theatre, though it is difficult to find work that is balanced and thoughtful. As a director, I am not necessarily interested in having an audience see my fingerprints, rather that they see the author’s intent through the journeys of the characters. Collaborating with designers and actors on how to support the playwright’s vision, while giving full breadth to our own, thrills me. It is in this supportive atmosphere that we take the first steps towards reaching out to our audience, finding the most potent and powerful ways to challenge them to think—to feel and to revisit their beliefs.

As an artistic director and producer, I most delight in empowering artists, putting our resources at their disposal, and giving them the shot at connecting with our Chicago audiences. When Jason Robert Brown played two brilliant songs for me from The Last Five Years, and told me that Lincoln Center probably wouldn’t produce it, I was thrilled to ask him to finish it and I would close my next season with it. Getting the rights from Noel Coward’s estate so that David Goldstein could fashion a new Coward review for this season was an exciting combination of bulldog determination and detective work that led to a lovely phone call with Coward’s long time partner Graham Payne, who was incredibly supportive and sweet. Connecting Craig Wright with Dexter Bullard, Michael Shannon and Mike Nussbaum for Grace was a thrill of discovery and alchemy perfectly embodying the joy of my job.

But what I strive for most as a producer and artistic director is to recreate the buzz from the lobby of my childhood. That level of engagement comes from a variety of work: classics, new plays, and musicals. My background and training come from repertory theatre, and the season was always geared toward a broad spectrum of theatrical tastes and certainly chosen to highlight the company’s skills.

I look for pieces that engage Northlight’s 7,000 plus subscribers, reflecting their sensibilities, challenging their political or ideological beliefs, and yes, even entertaining them during times of personal stress and psychic weariness. That, perhaps, is the most difficult part of the job—matching the times with the temper and tenor of our audience in the hope of catching their zeitgeist, so that we can have that vital and clear communication.

This is not pandering. It’s knowing what they are ready for and taking them on the next step in the journey of artistic growth. When that happens, amazing theatre is the result. It is not a one-way street coming off the stage; it is the interaction in the room, the fission of feeling, and the thermal heat of thoughts connecting and catching fire. Actors know it when they hit the stage. “Are they there, do they care, are they with us?” It is truly a Byzantine chemistry set, impossible to predict, slippery, and, yes, spiritual.

Perhaps that is what makes “amazing” theatre for me. There is no certainty, only unpredictability, and when “amazing” happens in a room full of strangers, it is magic.

BJ Jones is an actor, director and artistic director of Northlight Theatre. 

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