Dream Play: Hal Brooks

Look into my eyes: Hal Brooks

Welcome to a new weekly feature (well, it will be weekly if a few more directors get back to me), in which we ask directors what they would stage if time, money, availability, and rights were not considerations.

Our first respondent is the mesmerizing (see pic) Hal Brooks who most recently directed directed No Child...by Nilaja Sun, now playing at the Barrow Street Theatre, which just won Best One-Person Show at HBO's Comedy Fest. He also directed Pulitzer Finalist Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno. Other credits: Rinne Groff's What Then (Clubbed Thumb); Don DeLillo's Valparaiso; Will Eno's The Flu Season (Oppy winner), Sharr White's Six Years (Humana Festival).

If left to his own devices, Brooks would choose...

"I'd love to stage the American (World?) premiere of Beckett's other first play, Eleutheria. I think there was once a reading of it at NYTW - and Paul Giamatti was in that. The play has been tied up in litigation for years. The story goes that Beckett's wife Suzanne shopped both Godot and Eleutheria around equally, but that the guy who eventually produced Godot - and didn't really get it - preferred the tree-as-set and five actors of Godot to Eleutheria's 18 characters and massive set.