SPOTLIGHT: Daniel J. Wilner '07

After assembling a selection of short Beckett plays last spring, Daniel J. Wilner ’07, a veteran actor, is ready to direct his first full-length play, Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” which is opening at the Loeb Ex this weekend. As if that wasn’t demanding enough, Wilner, a philosophy concentrator, also chose to write a senior thesis.

"In a way, it was really useful to do both at once. It got a little hectic juggling rehearsal and writing at one point, but I feel both writing a thesis and directing a play have similar challenges, and the way to make both work is to figure out what the project is at its core and to be able to summarize that in one sentence. It has to pass the elevator test. You get into an elevator and someone asks, “So what’s this thesis about?” Or “So what’s this play about?” It forces you to cut away all the unnecessary stuff, and focus deeply on that one thing."

Wilner says his background as an actor gives him an advantage as a director.

"Having acted for many years, I think I know the vocabulary that an actor thinks and speaks in when building a character and building a scene...And I also know, having been an actor, what it’s like to get a direction that is helpful and then to get one that is confusing and frustrating."

Wilner has never seen a performance of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which treats the decline of the marriage between two academics, and says he avoided watching the movie adaptation so that he and the cast could come up with an entirely original interpretation.

"I’d read [the script] before and then I reread it several times when I decided to direct it. At a gut emotional level, it’s a really beautiful and really sad play, and it moved me just as profoundly each time I reread it. "

Wilner says he’s especially excited about creating an interactive theatre environment.

"What we’re doing that might be distinctive is we’re building a living room in the theatre. Rather than have actors on the stage presenting the show to the audience, the actors and the audience are all participating, experiencing this event together."

Wilner faced unique casting challenges resulting from the fact that play has only four characters.

"It’s a tight ensemble piece, and everyone needs to be there in the scene all the time. But it’s incredibly exciting because these four actors are astounding. It was risky for me to choose to direct this play because the parts demand huge talent and experience from the actors, and I feel all four of them are exceptional in so many ways."

Although the preparation process wasn’t all fun and games, Wilner says that having spirited rehearsals helped develop the cast and crew’s vision of the show.

"We joked around a lot, and our having fun really helped us bond as a team, and also to get us more energetic and engaged because this play has a lot to do with games and poking fun. The playfulness of these people, these personalities, and the playfulness of our rehearsal room really helped us find a lot of what we needed for the play, given how important that is to what’s happening."

With years of acting already under his belt, Wilner is excited to direct more in the future.

"Directing is a more stressful process because there’s more that you have to worry about and be responsible for, but that’s also what makes me like it, that you’re called upon to be the captain of the team, to figure out all this dramatic stuff, which requires going through psychological and textual analysis in addition to the design element and the set and the lights. It’s really exciting because you can bring the whole wealth of your experience not just in theatre, but in life to the process, and I feel I can bring more of my life, my knowledge, and my background to directing than I can to acting."