Michael Mayer is one of the most successful, sought-after play doctors on Broadway. He has won a Tony Award and worked with major playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Tony Kushner.
But for all his success in New York City, Mayer, a Maryland native, hasn't had much luck finding jobs in or around his hometown.
"I've had this weird career, and the fact that I'm on Broadway still makes me laugh," said the 48-year-old Mayer, who grew up in Bethesda.
"My dream was always to be a regional theater director, but for whatever reason, that isn't the way it's worked out. It's really hilarious to me that I can't get hired in the regional theaters, I can only get hired on Broadway. Most directors have the opposite goal."
Mayer has overseen some of the quirkier, more complex works on The Great White Way - including Side Man, 'night, Mother, and Spring Awakening. His most recent triumph is Spring Awakening, for which he picked up a best directing Tony in 2007, after having been previously nominated three times. The national tour of the musical is running at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center through June 21.
Mayer didn't just direct Spring Awakening; he was one of the chief midwives.
"A musical has up to three authors: the book writer, the composer and the lyricist," he says.
"They're crucial, but as the director, I'm the funnel for all those creative people. A musical is hellbent on self-destruction. It's on the operating table, and I'm the surgeon trying to find out where the heartbeat is so it will come to life."
A straight comedy or drama, Mayer says, arises almost entirely from the vision of the playwright, while a movie primarily is the director's creation.
"At the end of the day," he says, "a musical is somewhere in between a play and a film. I feel like I'm the conductor or the marshal or general or commandant, but a musical is never going to be just my vision, in the way that a movie is."
Every stage show presents unique challenges, but the obstacles in the path of Spring Awakening were more daunting than most.
The story about the sexual coming of age of a group of Victorian-era teens is based on an unlikely vehicle for a smash Broadway hit - an 1892 drama by German playwright Frank Wedekind.
Spring Awakening deals frankly with incest and sadomasochism. Some dialogue can't be published. There's partial nudity and a graphic, on-stage simulation of sexual intercourse.
