TDF Stages

The performers-turned-directors of Job, Empire: The Musical and Cellino v. Barnes on why they love calling the shots

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Booking a Broadway show can feel like arriving at a final destination, even when you get there at a young age. "I felt like I peaked at 11," jokes Michael Herwitz, who acted in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dracula, the Musical as a child.

However, for Herwitz and fellow Broadway alums Alex Wyse, Wesley Taylor and Cady Huffman, acting on the Great White Way was not just a milestone. It turned out to be a stepping stone to directing.

There's a long tradition of Broadway performers becoming directors—see Joe Mantello, Casey Nicholaw, Rob Marshall, Maria Friedman and Bob Fosse, to name a handful. The trajectory makes sense since the same core skills apply. "My favorite part of all this is working with other people," says Wyse, who's co-directing the new romp Cellino v. Barnes with Wesley Taylor at Asylum NYC. Both Broadway musical vets (Taylor appeared in Rock of Ages, The Addams Family and SpongeBob SquarePants, while Wyse's acting credits include Spring Awakening and Waitress), the longtime friends co-created, co-directed and costarred in the web series Indoor Boys. But Cellino v. Barnes marks their debut as theatre directors. "We are both really excited by collaborating, so this felt like a different way to collaborate from what we're used to," Wyse says.

That notion of teamwork permeates Cellino v. Barnes, both on and backstage. "It's a two-hander by two writers with a two-person directing team," Taylor notes. A campy comedy about the rise and litigious fall of the NYC-based injury law firm Cellino & Barnes, Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes' show is a silly love letter to the duo, known for their viral jingle and ubiquitous ads. "They're who started those billboards, benches and buses," Taylor says.

As a first-time stage director, Taylor says he's inspired by the artists who helmed the shows he worked on in the past. "Many-minded is better than single-minded in terms of making theatre," he says. "Back in December, we were lucky to have a 29-hour reading of a play that we wrote, and our director worked very closely with us on sharpening it. And I remember how closely Tina [Landau] worked with Kyle [Jarrow, the book writer] on SpongeBob. It's so important to have that dynamic."

Like Taylor and Wyse, Cady Huffman also cut her teeth in Broadway musicals, winning a Tony Award for her seductive turn as Ulla in The Producers. Now she's directing Empire: The Musical, Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull's musical celebrating the men and women who constructed the Empire State Building.

While Huffman has helmed shows regionally and downtown, Empire, currently running at New World Stages, marks her Off-Broadway debut as a director. She has a long history with the musical: "I was in a staged reading of it years ago at Lincoln Center, and it had been real fun," she says.

Cut to December 2023, when she bumped into Sherman at a show. "She told me, 'We know you are directing now. We loved what you did 14 years ago , but we also loved what you said 14 years ago,'" Huffman recalls, adding that while she didn't remember her exact feedback, "I said something like, 'If you write less, I can do more.'" Ultimately, they hired her not just as a director, but a dramaturg, too.

As Huffman continues growing in this next phase of her career, she's been looking back at the artistic interactions that shaped her and figuring out how she wants to command a room. "I've been thinking of my experience with Bob Fosse when I was 20," she says, particularly "the moment we spoke privately in a bar after I was injured during tech" on his Broadway show Big Deal. She appreciated how the director-choreographer consoled her when she had a setback during her big break.

"These ghosts came back to me with Empire," she says. "I learned my kindness from Bob: I can choose which way I treat my actors. I'm older and can't do the physical stuff I used to do. But my brain has been taking all this info in over the years, and now I'm seeing the big picture. I've learned what style works for me and how to make the audience focus on what I want them to focus on and tell the story I want to tell."

And she always leads with a sense of play. "I love to rehearse much more than I love performance," Huffman says. "I want to be in that room creating."

Playfulness also spurred Herwitz's love of performing and, eventually, directing. He recalls being 3 or 4 and listening to his older sister taking singing lessons in the next room. "I would wave my arms as if conducting," he says. Soon he was following in her footsteps. "I got an agent, and my first real audition was the 2004 Joe Mantello Assassins," he says. While he didn't get that part, he made his Broadway debut later that year at the tender age of 8 in Dracula, the Musical.

His memories of performing and, more importantly, watching shows night after night from the wings as a child, influenced how he thinks about theatre. "Dracula had been a flop and Chitty was kind of flopping, so I started taking notes about how to fix the show," he explains. "I was precocious. I went to the Chitty stage management office and said, 'I think we should cut this.' All these stage managers said, 'You think like a director, you have good notes.' When these adults I admired said that and saw how hungry and curious I was, it started to nurture that part of me."

Now after a two-decade absence, Herwitz is back on Broadway as the director for Max Wolf Friedlich's psychological thriller Job, about an anguished big tech worker trying to convince a therapist she's well enough to return to her position. The two-person play has enjoyed quite the journey, from winning Soho Playhouse's 2022 Lighthouse Series competition, to two sold-out downtown engagements that earned rave reviews in traditional media and on TikTok, to a buzzy Broadway transfer. Herwitz has been along for the entire ride, but his return to Broadway is perhaps even more incredible.

"If those Broadway shows I was in had been successful, I don't know if it would have worked out the same way," he admits. "People backstage at those shows saw a director in me."

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TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for Empire: The Musical, Cellino v. Barnes and Job. Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.