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Local filmmaker Steve “Stevo” Parys makes his stage-directing debut this week. It’s fitting that the play is “The Shark is Broken”: Parys cut his cinematic teeth, as it were, on “Jaws,” the classic whose wild behind-the-scenes story is told in this comedic drama.
While Parys was hardly the only 13-year-old who in 1975 saw “Jaws” 20 times, relatively few of them went on to a career in movies. Parys has been a stalwart of Pittsburgh’s film industry for more than three decades, directing indie shorts and features and working as first assistant director on locally shot productions including “Dogma,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and TV’s “American Rust.”
Still, barebones productions’ Patrick Jordan didn’t have to twist Parys’ arm much. The two have shared local film sets for years; Parys had contemplated trying his hand at live theater. And he’s a big enough “Jaws” fan that he’d already seen “The Shark is Broken” on Broadway.
“Shark” is not a documentary; its characters include neither Steven Spielberg — the 27-year-old wunderkind director whose name the film would make — nor any other crew members. Rather, it focuses on the contentious relationship between the film’s three stars, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw, isolated on their shark-hunting boat during the long stretches when the huge mechanical fish is out of commission. (Ian Shaw, who co-wrote the play with Joseph Nixon, is the late Shaw’s son, and played his father on Broadway.)
That Parys understood the play’s milieu was a given. “I don’t know anybody who’s been on more film sets than Stevo,” said Jordan, who’s worked with him on productions including “American Rust” and TV’s “Supah Ninjas.”
For barebones, Jordan plays Shaw, with Patrick Cannon as Scheider and Quinn Patrick Shannon as Dreyfuss. (Yes, all three actors are Patricks.)
In film, first assistant directors are most concerned with logistics — keeping the shoot on time and under budget. But Parys says his teenaged analysis of the editing and shot selection in “Jaws” was an early spark for his filmmaking ambitions, and he’s spent plenty of time behind the camera, too — including a director’s credit on Cannon’s 2018 TV pilot “Mulligan” (which also featured Jordan).
Acting for a live, in-person audience is different from performing on film. But thanks in part to the intimate size of the 65-seat barebones black box theater, Parys says working with actors for this show wasn’t all that different. “It’s probably the closest thing you can get to film acting on stage in the city,” Jordan said. “You don’t have to reach the back row of the Byham.”
Still, Parys says his transition to stage came with a learning curve. From sheer habit, for instance, he keeps imagining cameras.
“I constantly think, ‘How would I cover this?” he says. “I tend to think, like, ‘Ooh, I’d like to do this, I’d like to do that.’ And then that kind of informs like, ‘Well I can’t do that, because we’re not shooting this on a camera, so how can I get that same kind of feeling with the actors or moving them in the space that I would with a camera?’”
And as a veteran first AD whose job it is “not to let a second go to waste” on set, he couldn’t help imagining how “unbelievably frustrated” he would have been had he worked “Jaws.”
Other speed bumps included theater lingo. “Every now and then I’ll whisper in his ear, ‘This meant that,’ when actors are talking about ‘downstage,’” Jordan says.
But what Parys brings to the production seems to far outweigh any rookie challenges. In particular, Parys says he understands the unique camaraderie that develops on a film set amongst cast and crew.
“You work 80 to 100 hours a week with them intensely through all sorts of situations and weather and good days and bad days,” said Parys. “It’s in the script, but I think I was able to infuse some of that feeling that you make your own family for that bubble of time.”
“The Shark is Broken” opens Fri., May 30, and runs through June 15. But if you don’t already have a ticket, you might be out of luck: The show was sold out weeks before opening night, though Jordan said last week there was a chance of adding more shows or extending the production’s run.
