Whether it’s William Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labours Lost” or Stephen Karam’s “Sons of the Prophet,” director Tamara Fisch starts with the same words — the ones the playwright wrote.
“My task is to mine (the script) for all the richness that is there and then reveal that,” says Fisch, who is directing “Sons of the Prophet” for TheatreSquared. “I’m looking to understand the way it functions and how it works and bring that to life. I’m always going back to the text.”
Even when she’s working on a play that’s in development — as she often does in New York — Fisch says she approaches it “as if it is exactly what it should be.” In the case of “Sons of the Prophet,” that’s a comedic drama in the vein of Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach” trilogy — “an emotional journey,” she calls it, that may evoke both laughter and tears.
Karam’s play, which was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, revolves around Joseph, a former track star who is struggling to deal with a dead-end job, mysterious pain and a family tragedy. Karam says he always tells people “it’s a comedy about human suffering. It’s the most accurate description, and it sets up expectations appropriately.”
“I don’t want to tell people it’s going to be a comedy like ‘Noises Off’ is a comedy; it’s not,” Fisch agrees. “But it’s a comedy in the way life is funny even when it’s hard.
“I always cry at the end of this play,” she admits. “But it’s because I’m moved, not because the end is tragic at all. The end is hopeful and uplifting and quite beautiful.”
Fisch describes the “working question in the play” as “How do we cope when hard things are thrown our way?”
“It’s an emotionally difficult story, with characters seeking a way forward and having trouble finding it,” she explains. “But it’s absolutely very funny. A lot of the humor comes from the way families are, from the way they interact, and how family can be incredibly loving and wonderful and still make you crazy.” Karam says he’s often asked if it’s his life story. “The truth is, it’s a complete work of fiction, so the answer is ‘no.’ But people want to know, is there some semblance of you and the people of your life infused into your work? Who am I but all of my experiences and the people I know and love? I wouldn’t know how to write something that didn’t feel deeply personal. So it’s hugely personal but not autobiographical.”
Fisch says having worked with Karam before, what she sees reflected in this mirror of the man is “the care and generosity with which the characters are rendered and how he approaches everything with delightful humor. You connect with a character not because he’s like you but because he’s so specific and so truthfully human that it transcends time and place and circumstances — and that all has to come from the heart and the soul and the voice of the writer.”
Fisch says she was “touched and honored” when Karam suggested she direct the T2 production. But a career in directing was the furthest thing from her mind when she enrolled at Yale University. When she directed a student written short play, “it was life changing,” she remembers. Challenging her intellect but also requiring her to bring to bear “my intuition, my emotional self and my physical self, it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done — and really exciting. And I was hooked.”
In this case, she promises, playgoers will be, too.
“Stephen has ensured we are having a good time all the time. Your experience of the play as an audience member is actually a fun ride. It’s not about people falling down and slamming doors, but it’s buoyant in spirit and full of a lot of great laughs.”