John Heckel has directed well-known plays by playwrights both distant (Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 ) and dead (Brecht’s Mother Courage). But working on a new play with the playwright, and bringing it to its first audience, has always been his first focus as a director.

“When I went as a student to the University of Iowa, I made a specific choice," he said. "What I wanted to do was original work, and the program there was about directors and writers working together. I didn’t think the world needed me to do another version of Hamlet. If I could help bring a new work into the theatre, that would be worth doing.”

Bringing actors into this process—particularly student actors—has an educational purpose as well. “In terms of creating collaborative work, with the writer in the rehearsal room—that’s exciting. To be able to model how that works to students—that’s neat. Especially because some of these actors are going to write plays themselves, and for them to see the playwright working with actors and the director—and enjoying it—is going to help them.”

“There’s room for students to participate, in writing music, in giving feedback on how a scene works or doesn’t work,” Heckel noted. “Actors exploring their character can give feedback to the writer. It’s a process of getting students to feel okay about offering ideas and alternatives, saying how about this or how about that.”

“With original work at this level, the collaborative process ups the ante for everybody involved in terms of participation, and risk.”

But the choice of what play he will work on is not a choice he makes lightly, whether it is new or old. “When you choose to direct a play, you are deciding that this particular topic area is going to be the focus of your life for a length of time—you’re going to carry it 24 hours a day, carry it into your dreams and your consciousness. In this case I had to decide that it’s okay to be focused on the issues of incarceration and the effect it has on family members. Then again, some people say that the play chooses you.”