Nonstop, N.Y. to L.A.

New York —  At 6:40 a.m. on an overcast Tuesday, director Scott Ellis boards an L.A.-bound flight, settling into a window seat toward the back of the business-class cabin. Wearing a blue baseball cap and a white sport shirt with sleeves that barely fit over assiduously maintained biceps, he pulls out a book and papers from his carry-on and stashes them in the seat pocket.

Working on only three hours of sleep and en route to rehearsals in L.A., the director might well use the flight to rest. Instead, Ellis plans to do homework. The papers are research for his upcoming Broadway production of “Twelve Angry Men.” The book he never leaves home without: Uta Hagen’s “Respect for Acting.”

Ellis discovered the legendary actress’ writings when he was a student at the Goodman School of Drama in Chicago and now reads it before the start of every show. “It’s about the questions that actors should ask, the questions that directors should ask,” says the personable 47-year-old, who began his career as an actor. “It goes back to the basics: What do you want from this scene, what do you want from a character, what’s in your way of getting it, and what do you do to get it? Those are the basic intentions and obstacles.

“Uta Hagen is very much a believer in truth in the situation,” he continues. “If something’s not working, you go back and ask those questions. So that’s why I read it. I always find it grounds me back.”

Ellis broke through in the ‘80s, quickly becoming one of the most in-demand names in musical theater. But unlike many who broke, then fizzled, he’s managed to parlay that initial streak into an enduring and influential career as one of New York’s most consistently busy directors. He has done this through a combination of Energizer Bunny-like work habits and an impressive array of alliances with some of theater’s heaviest hitters, including John Kander, Fred Ebb, Harold Prince and Stephen Sondheim.

Moreover, it’s not just who he knows but where he hangs his hat. Ellis is associate artistic director of New York’s Roundabout Theatre and an artist in residence with the Nederlander Organization, one of Broadway’s biggest commercial producers. His revival of his New York City Opera staging of Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s “A Little Night Music” opens at Los Angeles Opera on Saturday. Choreographed by Susan Stroman and conducted by John DeMain, the musical stars Victor Garber, Judith Ivey and Zoe Caldwell.

Ellis’ work life may be peripatetic, but his method in the rehearsal room is calm and focused. His directorial style emphasizes acting and emotional resonance rather than concept or mise-en-scene. “I’m not a flashy director,” he says, seated in a rehearsal room during a rare quiet moment after several days of flurried activity shepherding three different productions on two coasts. “I’m the type of director that people will say, ‘Well, what do you do?’ For me, it’s just about finding the truth. That takes time and a lot of work. In the long run, what might ultimately look easy and very natural was actually a long process.”

Monday, 9:30 a.m.

William Ivey Long studios,

West 20th Street

After beginning his day with a run in his upper Central Park West neighborhood, Ellis arrives downtown for his first production meeting with William Ivey Long, who will be designing the costumes for Ellis’ staging of Terrence McNally’s new play, “Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams,” this summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

With charts plotting the script’s costume changes, the men discuss each actor’s attire. They flag the potential problems, such as actor Boyd Gaines’ quick change from a bunny suit into a full skirt. But they also discuss more subtle shades of meaning. Long suggests that though the piece has a certain black comedy sensibility, “everything should be real, real, real.”

“Except Marian’s character,” Ellis adds, referring to actress Marian Seldes. “Their real clothes, the basic costumes, I think we should pop a bit.”

“I’m not suggesting this, but it’s almost the type of people who wear scarves,” Long says. “You don’t want them to look foolish. We have to believe these people. We should be caught off guard by the black humor.”

10:30 a.m.

Roundabout Theatre administrative offices, West 39th Street

After taking a cab uptown, Ellis drops by his office at the Roundabout, where he has been associate artistic director for the last five years.

The Roundabout is Ellis’ primary base. “Scott is extraordinary with actors and always brings out the best in them,” says Todd Haimes, the theater’s artistic director, who gave Ellis his first Broadway show. “He brings out the warmth and humanity in everything he directs, and he makes you really love and believe in those characters. The people who can always direct actors well will be successful.”

And busy. Ellis darts out of the Roundabout as quickly as he arrived, downing a Zone bar without breaking stride as he makes his way to his next meeting.

11 a.m.

Nederlander offices,

Broadway and 41st Street

The Nederlanders were among the producers of Ellis’ first major musical, “She Loves Me.” “We just got along, and they asked if I would like to come into their office and be in residence,” Ellis says.

Just now, he’s using the conference room for a production meeting with “Twelve Angry Men” costume designer Michael Krass, who also designed Ellis’ 2002 staging of Arthur Miller’s “The Man Who Had All the Luck,” starring Chris O’Donnell. On the table, Ellis spreads head shots of the 10 actors he has cast thus far.

“The most important thing for me in any show is casting,” Ellis says. “A lot of things I’m not confident about, but the casting I am. Between 75% and 95% of something that works or doesn’t work is correct casting.”

Unfortunately, it’s not simply a matter of may the best man win. These days, there is increasing pressure to cast celebrities. “It’s a problem with stars coming to stage, because a lot of them can’t do it, they do not have the craft,” he says, adding that O’Donnell, who had never done stage work before, proved to be an exception. “Even with ‘Twelve Angry Men,’ there’s a little pressure trying to find a name, where I feel it doesn’t need a name, it just needs a really good actor.”

Noon

Roundabout rehearsal studios,

West 45th Street

Ellis arrives at the rehearsal space where he will spend the afternoon preparing his cast for a reading of “Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams.” But first, before the rehearsals begin, he spends time studying the set model with McNally and designer Anna Louizos. With the minimal budget but plentiful apprentice labor typical of Williamstown, the plan is to turn a black-box space into the semblance of a grand old theater that the script requires.

Within the hour, the cast arrives, including such Ellis regulars as Gaines and Debra Monk, and the ever elegant Seldes. The director plays host, welcoming his actors warmly. “The most important thing a director can do,” Ellis says, “is set the tone in the room.”

He gives little direction the first time they read through the script, but even so he’s taking notes, waiting for the right moment to make this or that gentle suggestion. “An actor comes into the room and their wall is half down, protecting themselves,” Ellis says. “If they don’t trust you, the wall will go up, and it will never come back down. If they start trusting you, the wall will slowly come down, and then that’s when the work can begin.”

5 p.m.

Laura Pels Theatre,

West 46th Street

After four hours of table work, the actors adjourn for dinner, and Ellis heads to the Roundabout’s newest space to focus lights and attend to details. One hour later, the actors arrive. At 7:30, an audience of donors and others is seated. Ellis introduces the reading, which he describes as “our way of thanking you, by giving you an opportunity to see some of the plays we’re thinking about doing.”

After the reading, Ellis and McNally will go out and pore over the script until 1 a.m. -- even though Ellis knows he has to get up at 4:30 a.m. to catch his flight to L.A.

Tuesday, 1:30 p.m.

Los Angeles Opera,

Music Center

After an uneventful flight highlighted by Rice Krispies and Uta Hagen, Ellis arrives to say hello to opera personnel and his already assembled cast members, whose first day of work was Monday. He gives a short pep talk to the 50 or so actors and staffers gathered together at his behest, then makes each person introduce himself to the group, a la summer camp.

This is not business as usual at Los Angeles Opera. The company has never had a “meet and greet” before; a fairly common practice in theater, it was Ellis’ idea. For that matter, L.A. Opera has never presented anything in the summer before. Nor has it presented a musical theater piece, at least not since Placido Domingo took over the company in 2000, although there were two musicals produced under founding general director Peter Hemmings. Moreover, there will be 23 performances of “A Little Night Music,” significantly more than of any previous production.

It’s a modest gamble perhaps, but more important it’s a potential moneymaker. “It represented the perfect sort of risk management,” says Christopher Koelsch, L.A. Opera’s director of artistic planning and budgeting. “We thought it was the perfect thing to expand our programming in general and to stake a claim for us as being a potential presenter-producer of this type of work.”

Inspired by a film by Ingmar Bergman, and originally produced and directed by Harold Prince, “A Little Night Music” is a musical comedy roundelay set in turn-of-the-century Sweden, featuring a famous actress named Desiree (Ivey) and her erstwhile lover Fredrik (Garber), who rekindle their affair.

Prince suggested Ellis for the job of directing the 1990 New York City Opera production. The staging was revived the following season, and again in 2003 with Jeremy Irons and Juliet Stevenson. “Casting being the most important thing, the casting of the last two productions and this one is all very different,” Ellis says. “That keeps it fresh. I don’t know how many shows I would ever do more than once.”

So far, “Night Music” is the only show Ellis has repeated in a career that began to take off shortly after he performed in Kander and Ebb’s 1984 musical, “The Rink.” Ellis persuaded the duo to let him revive their “Flora, the Red Menace,” and it was enough of a success to launch his directing career. In 1990, he and David Thompson put together the Kander and Ebb revue “The World Goes ‘Round.”

In the years since, Ellis, who was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Virginia, has made a name for himself primarily as a director of musicals, including “Company,” “1776” and the ill-fated Kander and Ebb “Steel Pier,” which he co-conceived with Stroman and Thompson. His dramatic outings include “Picnic,” “A Month in the Country” with Helen Mirren and “The Rainmaker” with Woody Harrelson.

In addition to the McNally script and “Twelve Angry Men,” Ellis has a new Kander and Ebb musical in the works. “Curtains,” which the team wrote some years ago but which has never been staged, will be produced at an as-yet-unannounced venue next year, with a new book by Rupert Holmes.

Thursday, noon

Los Angeles Opera rehearsal room

Ellis, Garber and Ivey are working on a scene in which Desiree and Fredrik discuss Fredrik’s habit of walking out on Desiree’s performances. It is a tender reunion, full of the complexities that come with years, and the task for the actors is to bring the relationship to life.

Garber enters with a hat and cane, then sets the hat down on the chaise where Ivey reclines. Ivey touches the hat, as though in recollection.

It’s just enough of a pause to give Ellis his opening. He seizes the opportunity to deepen the moment.

Conferring with Ivey, he gently prompts her with Hagen-style questions about the hat and what might have happened just before the scene they are enacting. “You were at the theater, you thought you saw him,” he says. “So what happened after that? Did you sit at that dressing room praying he was coming back and he never showed up?

“So he has a hat. Well, what does that hat mean to her? When was the last time she saw the hat? Was that the hat that he wore the first time she saw him?”

Like Hagen, Ellis is big on props and character research. “He’s incredibly well prepared and motivated,” says Garber, who has known Ellis for 20 years. “There’s nothing he can’t handle in a rehearsal situation. Every time I hear him talk to any actor, I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. Maybe that comes from his being an actor. He’s all about the humanity and not about the effect.”

It’s not merely that Ellis and his actors share the experience of life in the theater but that he’s open to the lessons that great works of art have to offer.

“I think all of us in the theater, and certainly Desiree, think, ‘I’ll find my happiness within the business,’ ” Ellis says. “And you get to a point as you get older and realize, ‘Uh-oh, that’s not it.’ She loves the theater, I love the theater, but there’s got to be other things.

“I didn’t understand ‘Send in the Clowns’ the first time I did it,” he continues, referring to the most famous number in “Night Music.” “I pretended I did, but I didn’t. That’s what experience and life does. Not only do I know better what questions to ask, my answers are a lot more interesting.”

*

‘A Little Night Music’

Where: Los Angeles Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Opens July 7. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, except 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 28; 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday, July 25, except 7 p.m. Saturday, July 10; 2 p.m. Saturdays after July 10 and Sundays.

Ends: July 31

Price: $20 to $100

Contact: (213) 365-3500