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Director Michael Mayer learned a lot directing the premiere of American Idiot in Berkeley, CA, in fall 2009. And it didn't all have to do with the challenges of adapting a classic rock album for the stage.

"I learned you can drink vast quantities of tequila and still be alert," said the Tony Award-winning director, nursing a Patrón Silver on the rocks at a table on Sardi's second floor. Blame Tré Cool, the drummer of Green Day. "He has created a really good drink called the Cheech," said Mayer. "It's tequila and tonic water and...I don't know what it is. But it's very good."

The food matched the drinks in quality during his time rehearsing American Idiot. Mayer went to Chez Panisse, Alice Waters' famous and influential bistro, every week. Food guru Waters, it turns out, is a big "American Idiot" fan. (Not surprising, perhaps, as the members of Green Day are among Berkeley's leading citizens.) "She would always avail herself of us," recalled Mayer. "Little gifts would arrive at the table at key moments during meals. A plate of unbelievable heirloom tomatoes or some salad of baby lettuces that we hadn't ordered would appear, like a miracle."

	Mayer with Billie Joe Armstrong
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Mayer last saw his Green Day collaborators in London, catching their act earlier this summer at Wembley Stadium, during the first leg of a much-needed vacation. He then visited playwright Tony Kushner and his partner, who were on vacation in Paris, finally meeting up with his own partner, Dr. Roger Waltzman, a physician, in Istanbul. There he happily discovered the local poison, an anise-flavored aperitif called Raki. "I had it every day. I love it. The way they do it is they bring the bottle, your glass, a little pitcher of water and a little bucket of ice. It's like ouzo."

Mayer and Kushner have known each other since 1981, when they met at NYU. Like many stage pilots, Mayer trained as an actor before finding fame as a director, acting in many of Kushner's early plays, including A Bright Room Called Day. He also directed a third-year NYU graduate student production of Angels in America: Perestroika which played at the same time the mammoth play's first part, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, bowed on Broadway. Mayer's work on that piece led to his big break: directing the national tour of Angels.

The two men will team up professionally for the first time in many years this coming spring, when Mayer directs Kushner's The Illusion. The adaptation of the famous Corneille work L'Illusion Comique will be part of Signature Theatre Company's season-long Off-Broadway celebration of Kushner's work.

That same NYU staging of Angels cemented another one of Mayer's longstanding professional friendships. At the time, a reporter from the Village Voice was researching an article about the show, interviewing members of the cast (which included Debra Messing and Ben Shenkman). The performers kept mentioning their director, Michael Mayer. "Is he from the D.C. area?" asked the curious journalist, whose name was Dick Scanlan. Scanlan would go on to write the book for the Broadway musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, which Mayer directed.