Frank Wood, Damon Gupton, Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos in "Clybourne Park"

It’s the morning after the first preview of Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer-winning comedy Clybourne Park, which opens at the Mark Taper Forum tonight. Director Pam MacKinnon — donned in a casual light blue-striped blouse, dark blue-striped pants and weathered brown boots — walks through the theater as carpenters hammer away, set designers do their adjustments and the technical crew has a confab about the cues that did and didn’t work.

“Hey, how are you doing?” asks MacKinnon in the general direction of several crew members.

“Hey,” say a couple of them, while two others nod that male nod of acknowledgement.

Tall and lean with a long, confident stride, MacKinnon stops and takes a look at the stage before making her way up the steps to the second floor lobby.

Pam MacKinnon; Photo by Scott Suchman

“It’s a beautiful day, let’s sit by the window,” says New York-based MacKinnon, who is carrying a copy of the Clybourne Park script. Her face accented by gray locks, she pulls a chair up to the massive window that overlooks the Music Center courtyard.

In about an hour she’ll hold a rehearsal and give notes to her actors. However, before that, she’ll talk about Clybourne Park and why she chose to direct a show that speaks to the issues of race relations, integration and housing — both in the turbulent past and the present day.

“Yes, you have race and integration as the hot-button issues,” MacKinnon says, but the play is also about the feelings of the characters for their homes, their community. “It becomes personal. That politeness starts to peel away. The playwright’s purpose is for the audience to question what has changed internally.”

Because of their past successful collaborations, MacKinnon says she felt comfortable working with Norris once again.

“I felt I was right for this show,” she says. “Some of it is personal. Bruce and I go back 15 years. I’ve worked with him on a couple of things — The Unmentionables (Woolly Mammoth, Helen Hayes Award nomination) and The Infidel. “We have an easy rehearsal hall rapport. Also, I think this is a good play for me because there are no scene breaks within the act. This is an afternoon from start to finish. I like working in that play form. I do a lot of Edward Albee. The audience experiences something in living time and so do the actors. I enjoy figuring out how do I manage and maintain that tension.”

Preview

Christina Kirk and Frank Wood

MacKinnon liked what she saw of the actors’ performances the previous evening, during the preview, and she liked the response from the audience. However, she wasn’t completely satisfied.  She is never completely satisfied.

“Oh, never,” she says. “That’s because it’s never quite done. I’m happy with it. I can walk out of a performance and say it was fantastic. But there is always a sense of, if we had another day.”

At the time of the interview, of course, she did still have a few days to work on Clybourne Park before tonight’s opening.

“We’re going to regroup,” she says. “We learned a lot. Some of it is technical. Some is this size of house. You’ve got to just send it out there. With the audience response – you have to let some laughs in. We’ve been doing it in an empty room. I’ve seen it 40 times, so I’m not going to laugh at those moments. In theater, you’re always learning and adjusting.”

MacKinnon has been with Clybourne Park since it began. She staged its premiere at New York’s Playwrights Horizons in February 2010. But staging it at a different theater presents new challenges.

“Playwrights Horizons was a very successful run,” she says. “I have all the same actors and designers, but a different playing space. We were working in a [Off-Broadway] proscenium theater with a 200 maximum audience.” The Taper, by contrast, has a thrust stage and seating for 735. “It’s a very different energy you have to bring.”

Park it

Damon Gupton, Crystal A. Dickinson, Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos

Clybourne Park takes off where Lorraine Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun ends by portraying events set before and after the play. In Raisin, the Youngers, a Negro family, are set to move into a house, located in a white neighborhood at 406 Clybourne Street in 1959 Chicago. Fast-forward to 2009. The neighborhood is now predominantly African-American, but the house is sold to a white couple.

The Taper production stars the entire original cast from Playwrights Horizons: Crystal A. Dickinson, Brendan Griffin, Damon Gupton, Christina Kirk, Annie Parisse, Jeremy Shamos and Frank Wood. This cast will transfer to Broadway on April 12 at the Walter Kerr Theatre. A different production of the play was staged by Dominic Cooke for the UK premiere in August 2010 at the Royal Court Theatre in London, winning an Olivier Award for best new play.

Center Theatre Group is not only opening the Taper’s 45th season with Clybourne Park, but last Sunday it revived Ebony Repertory Theatre’s production of A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Phylicia Rashad at CTG’s Kirk Douglas Theatre.  A Raisin in the Sun will run through Feb. 19.

MacKinnon, 44, likes the concept of the joint productions.

Deidrie Henry, Kevin T. Carroll, Kim Staunton, Kenya Alexander and Brandon David Brown in the Ebony Repertory Theatre production of "A Raisin in the Sun" at the Kirk Douglas Theatre; Photo by Craig Schwartz

“I think it’s an exciting opportunity,” she says. “Bruce [Norris] has written a play where there is one character from Raisin who shows up in the second scene [of A Raisin in the Sun] and then gets in his car and shows up in our show here.  There is a story overlap. But obviously Bruce is showing the white community and what they are dealing with. It’s a great opportunity for the audience to see both.”

MacKinnon says the first time she ever saw the movie version of A Raisin in the Sun, it played like a staged production.

“I saw the movie when I was in my late teens,” she says. “I think it’s a powerful piece of art and a powerful story. It hits home. It really feels like a play. It was my early years of acting and directing. But what I remember is that it pops off the screen as a play.”

Getting Started

MacKinnon’s venture into the arts was anything but a straight line from point A to point B.  She took a couple of detours before settling in to what would become her life’s work.

Born in Chicago, she grew up in or near Buffalo and Toronto. She went to school in Buffalo before transferring to the University of Toronto. After transferring yet again, she ended up in graduate school at UC San Diego, where she studied political science.

Karl Miller and Mandy Siegfried in the South Coast Repertory production of "Completeness"; Photo by Scott Brinegar

“I was very interested in political science,” says MacKinnon. But while in grad school, she realized that the call of the theater was louder. “I acted and directed some in high school and college and then stepped away at age 19, went into political science, then realized I wasn’t interested enough in political science.”

She’s now been directing professionally, she says, more than 15 years. An alumna of the Drama League Directors Project and the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, MacKinnon sits on the board of the New York company Clubbed Thumb, Inc., dedicated to new American plays.

Among her directing credits: Itamar Moses’ Completeness (South Coast Repertory, Playwrights Horizons); David Weiner’s Extraordinary Chambers (Geffen Playhouse); David Bar Katz’s Atmosphere of Memory (Labyrinth); Gina Gionfroddo’s Becky Shaw (SCR); Itamar Moses’ The Four of Us (Old Globe, MTC); Rachel Axler’s Smudge (Women’s Project); Edward Albee’s Peter and Jerry (Hartford, Second Stage) and Occupant (Signature); Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Steppenwolf) and A Delicate Balance (Arena Stage).

Marin Hinkle and Francois Chau in the Geffen Playhouse production of "Extraordinary Chambers"; Photo by Michael Lamont

“In the beginning I directed a lot of avant-garde plays,” says MacKinnon.  “I did both new and Russian futurist stuff like Mayakovsky, stuff on the Russian revolution.” She staged a short play by Mayakovsky in an outdoor stairwell, with about 40 people in the audience.

MacKinnon laughs a hearty laugh as she remembers what turned out to be a particularly comical yet transformative moment in one of the performances.

“There was one night where a pizza delivery guy had to go down our stairwell during the performance,” says MacKinnon. “We had to deal with that. It was in the moment. He walked through a scene. That was fantastic.”

Play-ing Around

MacKinnon, who says she has never had the desire to write a play, would really rather direct. She prides herself in working well with playwrights.

“I think my temperament emotionally and intellectually is suited for the rehearsal process,” says MacKinnon. “I am able to stay open and learn a lot — hour to hour, day to day. It’s about the work and communication. Directing is a verbal art form. I work with actors and designers. I keep myself open to the best idea in the room, which doesn’t have to come from me. It can come from anyone.”

Jeremy Shamos, Damon Gupton and Crystal A. Dickinson

For MacKinnon, it’s important that she not get in her own way or, more important, in the way of the playwright.

“I work a lot of new plays with playwrights,” she explains. “My primary job is to interpret and bring to life the vision of the playwright. I want to do it as intended. I’m an interpreter of a play. If I want to pull it apart, I should write my own play.”

Theater, it seems, is her drug of choice. “I get a high,” says MacKinnon, referring to what theater does for her. “There is something about sitting in an audience and going on a ride that I’m responsible for having built…Whether it’s a laugh or recognizing a silent audience, there is still an understanding of what’s going to happen next.”

MacKinnon relishes the symbiosis of audience and character.

“I love that kind of thing where we’re all in the same room – audience and character going through something simultaneously,” she says. “If you can do it right, it just adds to what we’ve been painstakingly, biologically working on. And to have a few hundred people in the room, watching what you’re doing, it raises the roof. The live event of theater is something I find very exciting. There is something great about turning off your cell phones and attending something for a span of time. There is a real entertainment value I take pride in. In life, there are fewer and fewer moments like this.”

Annie Parisse, Christina Kirk, Brendan Griffin, Frank Wood and Jeremy Shamos

MacKinnon, who does five to seven plays a year, heads next to the Denver Center Theatre Company, to workshop Richard Dresser’s new The Hand of God, in the first week of February.

“I’m not a workaholic, but I go from play to play,” she says. “I love that I’m going through this career picking projects I really want to do. I say no to a lot of stuff. I’m a freelancer, and I’ve got to make a living. Sometimes I say no to something for next spring not knowing if I’ll be employed next spring. I feel fortunate. I know there aren’t that many people who can say, ‘I’m a working theater director’. There are only a few of us. Just a handful of people. It’s crazy, but true.” Despite all the travel, she has been in a relationship with her boyfriend for five years.

MacKinnon, whose laidback persona is a dead giveaway to her coolness, is proud of her work. As the conversation continues, it’s clear she didn’t choose theater, but rather it chose her.

“There is something great about starting a show, and I hope it never stops,” she says. “There is some great enjoyment about the first day at the rehearsal table-read, hearing actors do their thing, long before I start mucking with their heads.  I’ve cast those people and when you sit in the room and gather together the right people for a project, it’s really exciting. I take pride and am jazzed by those who walk in the room and sit down. Now let’s start working on a play.”

Clybourne Park, presented by Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum. Opens Jan. 25.  Plays Tues-Fri 8 pm; Sat 2:30 and 8 pm; Sun at 1 and 6:30 pm. (No public performances Feb. 21-24 — student performances only). Through Feb. 26. Tickets: $20-70. Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center, 135 N. Grand Avenue, LA.  213-628-2772, www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.

***All Clybourne Park production photos by Craig Schwartz