CFA News
Nominated for her second Tony Award, Stone proves that the old way of learning to direct still garners thrilling new ideas.
Jessica Stone took a fairly traditional path to the director’s chair — albeit one that has come to seem strange in the age of the MFA. She was an actor for years, appearing on Broadway in Grease, The Odd Couple, and Anything Goes. But by the 2011 run of the latter, she knew she needed a career change. So she spent a decade directing smallish shows all over the country. Only recently has she catapulted into the inner circle of Broadway’s most exciting directors.
She was nominated for a Tony last season for helming Kimberly Akimbo, which went on to win Best Musical. And she’s nominated again this season for Water for Elephants, the spectacular circus musical by Rick Elice and PigPen Theatre Co., which is also a contender for Best Musical. She really didn’t expect to get the job when she threw her hat in the ring.
“I thought of my first meeting with the producers of Water for Elephants as my own version of graduate school,” Stone admitted, recalling her early vision of a circus spectacle that materializes out of the hazy memories of Jacob Jankowski, the elderly veterinarian at the center of the tale. She was going to show the producers (and herself) that she can take on a show with big themes and even bigger practical challenges — bigger than anything she has previously directed. “And to their credit, they said, ‘OK, go away and come back and talk to us about how you imagine what this thing might look like.’”
I spoke with Stone about how the director of a quirky chamber musical like Kimberly Akimbofound her way into the giant circus musical now performing at the Imperial Theatre.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Read More (Source: https://www.theatermania.com/news/interview-water-for-elephants-director-jessica-stone-on-what-the-circus-can-teach-broadway_1741794/)