Keeping Some 'Fast Company' with Prolific Director and Producer M. Bevin O'Gara

M. Bevin O'Gara has directed a string of impressive plays across the Boston theater scene, including Nina Raine's "Tribes," about a deaf young man developing new allegiances apart from his hearing family; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "appropriate," in which grown siblings return to a Louisiana home to sort through old quarrels and family belongings, and make a horrifying discovery; and the Kirsten Greenidge play Milk Like Sugar," which peers intently at the lives of young women facing limited options for their lives. On the flip side of "Milk Like Sugar,"there's "A Future Perfect," the Ken Urban play O'Gara directed early in 2015 about two married professional couples, and how their ambitions, loyalties, and values come into conflict. O'Gara also helmed a 2014 production of Melinda Lopez's "Becoming Cuba," set on the eve of a revolution - not Fidel's, but rather an earlier upheaval, in 1897.

Of the plays mentioned above, SpeakEasy Stage Company offered Boston audiences "Tribes," "appropriate," and "A Future Perfect," while the Huntington Theatre put up "Milk Like Sugar" and "Becoming Cuba." The director has also overseen plays for Company One, including the "The Chronicles of Kalki," which is one part of Aditi Brennan Kapil's "The Displaced Hindu Gods Trilogy."

You get the sense that any play about Hindu deities is going to be especially meaningful for the busy director: Given her many responsibilities between her job at the Huntington and the projects she takes on every season, she must feel some level of kinship with the multi-armed goddesses of that pantheon, if only because she has so many tasks and projects to juggle. A further look at her resume shows that O'Gara has also directed "The Pain and the Itch" for C1, as well as helming "Translations" for Bad Habit and taking the reins for numerous other works for companies a diverse as the New Repertory Theatre, Central Square Theater, and the Boston Playwrights' Theater

Now O'Gara makes her debut at another Boston theater stalwart, the Lyric Stage Company, with Carla Ching's comedy of con artists and family dynamics, "Fast Company." O'Gara gave EDGE the story behind her multi-tasking professional responsibilities and shared what, to her, is the starting point for any project.

EDGE: You are the associate producer at the Huntington, as well as being a prolific director on stages all around the Boston theater scene. What does as associate producer do, exactly?

M. Bevin O'Gara: Everything and anything. I produce all of the shows that happen over at the Pavilion [at the Boston Center for the Arts], so anything that happens at the Wimberly and the Roberts [Theaters], those are my shows, to make sure they happen. I work on hiring the designers, I work directly with the directors and press people and production staff to make sure that the production runs smoothly.

EDGE: Do you produce your own work sometimes?

M. Bevin O'Gara: When I'm directing, producing director Chris Wigle produces my show. I usually produce three shows a year at the Huntington. I usually do three shows a year, so this year I've directed "Milk Like Sugar," and I've produced "Choice," and I'm producing "Can You Forgive Her?" right now. I also produce all our readings and workshops, so we do the Breaking Ground readings series, usually in April. And the summer play workshops - we do four readings by playwriting fellows every summer. I'm also essentially our local casting director, for lack of a better term. I've also do a lot of liaising to the different universities, and I used to run our 35 Below program, which is our young patrons program, which I have now turned over to someone else - which is amazing! And now I'm working on the young donor program that we launched a couple years ago, called The Hunt. That's pretty much a general summation of what my day job entails.

EDGE: That is amazing. How do you manage so many things?

M. Bevin O'Gara: I don't sleep and I have no friends. [Laughter] It's a lot of juggling. I love what I do. I love crating this art. The thing that's so amazing about my work is how [the different aspects of the theater arts] feed each other. I'm getting to meet and know local artists as a local director. I can really represent them and bring them to Peter [DuBois, the Hunting Theatre's Artistic Director], or to production managers and say, "This is someone I really think should be working with us."

As a director, I get exposed to seven other directors every year,. I get to be really inside how other people think, how other people run processes, how they problem solve. It's allowed me a lot of different points of view to shape who I am and what kind of work I want to put up there, and how I want to be getting it up there. I like to think of it all as a snake that is feeding itself.

[Also,] the Huntington has in incredible program of apprentices, so I've got an apprentice every year who is learning the ropes, and that helps me in the day-to-day tasks of casting a show, or producing a show, or producing a workshop. I don't think I'd be able to do [everything] without that, and really without the support I get from both ends - I get so much support from the Huntington to do these other projects, but I also get a lot of support form these companies in order to make sure I'm keeping my day job up.

EDGE: Having so much working experience and expertise in so many aspects of the theatrical process must be invaluable in giving you insight into all of the different tasks that go into creating a show - the technical aspects of a show like "Tribes," for example, or the way a set can become another character in a play, as was the case in "appropriate." Those things tend to mesh and intersect in highly successful ways for your projects.

M. Bevin O'Gara: Yes, exactly - I can tell how everything I've produced feeds into the next thing that I direct. "Tribes" was the result of the work I had done with Company One and having experience with the deaf community and a deep understanding of the deaf community at the time I started that rehearsal process. And now, for just over a year now I've been workshopping this new play of Craig Lucas' that features deaf artists. It's really how each piece feeds each other - also, it's little things. I see how we solved a problem last year on "Future Perfect," we ran for the first time the "stage caller system," to make the iPhones work on stage appropriately. I was able to bring that to the table at the Huntington for "Milk Like Sugar." We ended up going a different way for "Milk Like Sugar," but that's one example of the technical challenges [I've had experience in addressing]. It's just so great to have such a wide berth of different resources and different knowledge. And it goes both ways, I bring things in both directions [directing to producing and vice versa] all the time.

EDGE: You've directed plays of all sorts - "Matt & Ben," "Tribes," "appropriate," and now "Fast Company," a family comedy about con men going up at the Lyric Stage.

M. Bevin O'Gara: Yeah - this one is completely different, and just fun and wacky. At the core of this play is a family. It is a group of individuals who are drawn together by love and by family ties. I think that is the thing that unifies all of my work, starting from that place of where is the love, which I think is something audiences gravitate toward. I love the humanity on stage; this is a group of con artists, but we've constantly talked about what makes that a family, and what makes them people you want to spend an hour and twenty minutes with. What are the blood bonds that allow you to screw each other over, but which will never break? That is the place I start with everything. It's been both exactly the same and completely different in this case, about a family that's trying to pull all these cons and psychological games on each other, but we're also integrating magic tricks and sleight-of-hand and all sorts of fun surprises - many of which I don't want to allude to. I walked out of tech last night saying. "Can I just get a one-set two-hander next time?" Because I fell like every show I get handed had more and more things to explore, which is what makes it challenging and exciting, and I think if I were doing a two-hander on one set, I'd probably be bored.

EDGE: Is that complexity part of what drew you to "Fast Company?"

M. Bevin O'Gara: It really was the family; this question of, "How can we do this to one another?" and when we do those kinds of things that it is that allows a relationship to be repaired? Or is it reparable? I really do notice in myself that the people I'm worst to are the ones who love me the most - which is one of my biggest faults! But I'm fascinated by the questions on, "I was just an asshole. Why do you still love me?" I think these characters are wrestling with that. It's also a production challenge, which I always love; it's fast paced; and also, it's a little wackier than what I've been doing, and that's really fun, to allow for there to be a sense of play among the characters. I was saying to the cast last night that they've developed a wonderful, wonderful repartee, [a sense of] of being siblings, of being with each other [on their] off days, and the last [part of the process] is to put that on stage. I just love seeing how a group like that comes together. I love ensemble plays, and this is truly an ensemble piece, much like "appropriate," much like "Tribes." That's one of the large things that draws me to anything - is it a good ensemble? Is there a way of creating a unit that will work well together? That's what I feel is something I'm good at and something I find very enjoyable.

EDGE: "Fast Company" has a fairly small cast. Have you worked with any of these actors before?

M. Bevin O'Gara: No - this is the first time in a really long time where I've worked with none of them! Michael [Hisamoto], who's playing H, is a senior over at BU; Tyler Simahk [playing Francis] graduated form Emerson a couple of years ago; Theresa [Nguyen, playing Blue], I had done an audition with at Emerson a number of years ago, though we haven't worked together; and Lin-Ann [Ching Kocar, playing Mable] is someone who I've seen audition a few times, but hadn't cast before. This is an entirely new cast for me, which is always fun, figuring out what makes different people tick.

EDGE: Plus, you can add them to your little black book of actors and remember them for projects in the future.

M. Bevin O'Gara: Exactly.

EDGE: "Fast Company" is also your debut at the Lyric Stage... you must be thrilled.

M. Bevin O'Gara: I'm so excited. Spiro [Veloudos, the producing artistic director of the Lyric Stage Company] and I have talked on and off for a number of years, and one of the first professional shows I saw in Boston was here at the Lyric, and I just remember thinking, "Oh my God, you can be a professional theater artist in Boston." The Lyric planted that seed for me. Now, hopefully it's all growing. I really have admired Spiro's work, and Nora, the associate artistic director here, is one of my favorite people in town. It really is such a pleasure to be working here.

EDGE: Do you have ambitions for other theater companies and performance spaces around town where you might not yet have worked?

M. Bevin O'Gara: I have a list of plays or writers, and a large list of actors who I've either worked with or want to work with. Playwrights and actors are a lot more on my bucket list than a venue or a theater. What I love about is working with other people; I love an idea getting thrown out, and another idea getting thrown out, and shaping what it is we're all doing together by throwing out fifteen ideas and seeing what sticks. It's really, for me, about the people I'm working with and the ideas on the page, not so much location. Though, before this, if there is a bucket list, Lyric is definitely on top!

EDGE: What's next for you as a director?

M. Bevin O'Gara: I've got something on at the Huntington for next year, but it's not officially announced yet. I've got a couple of things floating around for next year, including a world premiere that I'm going to be working on with a local playwright over the summer and into fall, and there are a couple other things that are also still hovering. I'm going to have another busy season next year, which is always good. I'm very lucky in that way.

EDGE: You certainly have made a mark in Boston's theater scene.

M. Bevin O'Gara: I try. I love this city, and I love these people. This is my home. The more rooms I can have in my home, at the Lyric, at the Huntington, at SpeakEasy, at Bad Habit, at Company One, the happier I am. There are just so many incredible artists in this city.

EDGE: And you're having fun!

M. Bevin O'Gara: I am. I mean, we don't get paid all that much, so what's the point of doing this if you're not having fun?

"Fast Company" continues at the Lyric Stage Company through March 27. For tickets and more information, please visit http://www.lyricstage.com

View a preview of the play at http://www.lyricstage.com/productions/production.cfm?ID=105&multimedia