Lila Neugebauer Interrogates the Ghosts of "Uncle Vanya"

One late-January day, the director Lila Neugebauer was at a gun range--or an antiseptic, fluorescent-white version of one--tucked inside the Specialists, Ltd., a theatrical-props behemoth in Ridgewood, Queens. Neugebauer, accompanied by two members of her team, had come to discuss a gun for her upcoming production of Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya," at Lincoln Center Theatre. The production is a starry one, with Steve Carell in the title role, alongside Alfred Molina, Alison Pill, Anika Noni Rose, and William Jackson Harper. With a new translation by the playwright Heidi Schreck--who was nominated for a Tony for her women's-rights jeremiad "What the Constitution Means to Me"--this is the first Broadway staging of Chekhov's masterpiece in more than twenty years. Neugebauer is small and quick, with flyaway black hair, straight black brows crossing a narrow face, and intent gray-green-golden eyes, like a fox's.