Potomac native comes home to direct ‘I Am My Own Wife’ at Signature

Area native Alan Paul makes his regional stage directing debut in Signature Theatre’s presentation of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning drama “I Am My Own Wife.” It stars Helen Hayes Award winner Andrew Long. From the age of 4, Paul fancied himself as Peter Pan while his mother, like as not, cooked dinner while listening to a DVD of “Meet Me in St. Louis.” His love of the theater grew with every show the family attended at the Kennedy Center, National Theatre and Arena Stage, along with junkets to Broadway.

After graduating from Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, he headed to Northwestern University, where he became newly excited by classical theater and absorbed all the Shakespeare plays before earning a degree in theater. Upon hearing friends brag about the shows they were directing, his goal shifted from performing in musicals to becoming a director.

“I thought, I know how to do that, too,” he said. “I’d learned from the directors of the plays I’d been in, and I knew that an actor has a hard life without much say unless he’s at the top of the food chain. The director has the artistic say and that appealed to me, so I began writing letters to stage managers on Broadway and London (SASE enclosed to encourage replies) asking for advice. Today I have a book of letters containing tips and suggestions from the best in the business.”

Paul owes his next move to his mother. While attending a performance at Arena Stage, she ran into the artistic director, Molly Smith, and mentioned her son aspired to become a director. Smith invited him to stop by at her office, which he did. He walked out as her assistant director of “Cabaret.”

During the past few years, his assistant director assignments in the D.C. area have included work with Rebecca Taichman in “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” at Woolly Mammoth, “33 Variations Workshop” with Moises Kaufman at Arena Stage and as the Shakespeare Theatre Company resident assistant director under Michael Kahn since 2008.

“Michael is a giant in classical theater,” Paul said. “Every day I spend with him is like being in a director master class and learning all the elements of the play from an extremely intelligent teacher. I started there on a fellowship that grew into the assistant position. Andrew Long and I had done four plays together at Shakespeare. When Signature approached him to do ‘I Am My Own Wife’ and asked who he wanted to direct it, he recommended me. Like everything else that has happened to me, this position came about by chance.”

Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite who survived the Nazi and East German Communist regimes, and the playwright who interviews her about her life are two of the 33 characters played by the sole performer. Paul enjoys the challenge of rehearsing with Long and deciding how to interpret each character, sometimes with a subtle change of lighting, the blink of an eye or a mere shift in facial expression.

“The playwright is a detective on a journey,” he said. “This play is about discovering that humans are more complicated than what meets the eye. Everyone contains the truth and its opposite. The joy of being human is in accepting all aspects of a person’s personality, not just the one part you want to see. I want the audience to understand that we must rethink how we accept others.”