Creatives in Practice: Jim Fagan

Between serving as director, producer, performer, and staff writer, Jim Fagan, assistant professor of directing, is committed to expanding his professional opportunities to BU students, recent alums

CFA Faculty

CREATIVES IN PRACTICE: JIM FAGAN

Between serving as director, producer, performer, and staff writer, Jim Fagan, assistant professor of directing, is committed to expanding his professional opportunities to BU students, recent alums

July 17, 2026

One thing that gravitates the next generation of artists to Boston University College of Fine Arts? Knowing that their professors, advisors, and mentors are also working artists, gaining real-world experience and bringing that back into the classroom through their curriculum, lessons, and talks. In CFA’s Creatives in Practice series, your favorite CFA faculty and staff members share the work they’re doing off campus, locally, nationally, and globally.

For some, summer season means slowing down and taking a break. For Jim Fagan, it’s been nonstop, in the best way. Between serving as resident director on the new musical The Real Kyle McCarren at Joe’s Pub in New York City, working with seasoned Broadway directors and Emmy-winning writers, and performing late-night comedy shows at festivals, Fagan, assistant professor of directing at Boston University, is committed to expanding these opportunities to his students.

Fagan recently shared with CFA what he’s been up to this summer and how being an educator has helped him become a better artist and professional. Fagan, whose career highlights include writing for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and directing and producing for Comedy Central, also reflects on his first anniversary teaching at BU School of Theatre.

Jim Fagan performs a featured late-night comedy show at the ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas. Photos by Matt Sayles

Q&A WITH JIM FAGAN

CFA: Thanks for chatting with us, Jim. Tell us more about the work you’re doing this summer.

Fagan: I’m working as the resident director on the new musical The Real Kyle McCarren at Joe’s Pub, assisting and working alongside seasoned Broadway co-directors Matt Cowart and Lonny Price. I will then serve as the resident director for the production’s run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in a co-production with The Public and Avalon UK. Second-year MFA Directing student Jake Sung-Guk Sullivan (CFA’27, MET’27) is observing and assisting on the Joe’s Pub production this summer.

I’m also the co-executive producer and a staff writer on The Terrors of Jordan Mendoza, a new live-action sketch comedy series for Adult Swim, with no set air date but hopefully soon. Also produced by Avalon (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver), the series features guest appearances from Steve Buscemi, Fred Armisen, Marc Maron, Lake Bell, Clea DuVall, and Wanda Sykes.

Polaroids and Instagram stories from The Real Kyle McCarren rehearsal room. The show has an intentional nostalgic throwback feeling. Follow the show on Instagram: @therealkylemccarren

This summer, I performed in a pair of late-night comedy shows alongside host and creator and two-time Emmy-winning writer Greg Iwinski (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Last Week Tonight) at both the ATX Television Festival in Austin (featuring members of the Friday Night Lights cast) and the Upright Citizens Brigade’s Del Close Marathon. Taline Banks (CFA’26) made her professional New York comedy debut as a writer and performer on my live comedy show, It Was Nice While It Lasted, at the Upright Citizens Brigade’s Del Close Marathon.

I also consulted on an upcoming short film co-starring rising BU School of Theatre junior Acting major Ellen Terzino (CFA’28), who earned a co-starring role through a standout audition. The film also features Michael Kosta (The Daily Show) and Bella Briggs (The Summer I Turned Pretty).

Left photo: Writer and performer Greg Iwinski and Jim Fagan at the ATX festival. Right photo: Behind-the-scenes shot from The Terrors of Jordan Mendoza, where Fagan serves as the co-executive producer and staff writer.

And ongoing, I’m developing A Little Drama, a new YouTube pilot co-created with my wife Carolyn Charpie, who shares a Tony honor for excellence for her work at The New Victory Theater in Times Square. It is inspired by her work in children’s theater. The series is designed to encourage children to put down screens and engage in imaginative play. Second-year SOT MFA director Jake Sung-Guk Sullivan (CFA’27, MET’27) is designing and performing puppets in the pilot!

How does your real-world experience in the field connect to your role as a faculty or staff member at BU College of Fine Arts?

As you can see above, one of the most direct ways is involving students in the work whenever I can. This is totally symbiotic; they get some “real world” experience, and I get some help! Although I don’t usually differentiate between the real world and the work we do here at the school, it’s all the work just at different scales. The work at school can often benefit by focusing more on the art and less on the commerce, major networks or companies in play, or intense and compressed schedule and timelines! We shouldn’t wait to do our art until we’re outside of these walls; it’s all fluid. There is of course the other obvious added benefit of being up to date on best practices, watching artists at the top of their fields do their work and keeping myself sharp by working with them and matching them, and then bringing that into the classroom to try and pass along what I’m seeing, hearing, and trying in my own work, and what I’m admiring in the work of others!

Jim Fagan, Greg Iwinski, and Taline Banks (CFA’26) at the 2026 Del Close Marathon in New York City. Banks made her professional New York comedy debut as a writer and performer on Fagan’s live comedy show, It Was Nice While It Lasted.

What inspires you about this role? How do you think it makes you a better artist, educator?

I’m going to answer in reverse, by talking about how being an educator is making me a better artist and professional… having just finished my first year at the School of Theatre, this setup I have now is the dream. It absolutely makes me a better artist to sharpen my skills by working with our incredible students, learn from my colleagues, and check in with my core artistic principles and philosophies as I teach them. Do they still hold up? How can I deepen them? What are the roots of the work I do?

Then I take all that good exercise and bring it back out into the field where I can rely on it and draw on it without overthinking as I move at the pace of professional work… where there’s usually not time to think about those things! Same as our students must do as they’re here and when they leave here. Then of course the whole process reverses – everything I’ve learned while I’m working professionally tests the things I’ve just been teaching… how are all my high-minded ideals holding up NOW that the pressure is on? Which ones am I relying on, and which ones am I quickly abandoning? Oh, and how is it that everyone is now working off an iPad in rehearsal? “That’s new……” etc., etc., etc. Rinse and repeat.

Overall, the way BU encourages us to get out and work, it’s a challenge to do it all at once, and it is taking some learning to figure out how to balance it all, but it’s one of my favorite parts of this job and why I took it. I joke I want to be like Indiana Jones when I grow up… teach, pass on what I know, and then grab my ridiculous hat and head out into the field. “That story belongs in a museum!”

Being an educator is making me a better artist and professional… having just finished my first year at the School of Theatre, this setup I have now is the dream. It absolutely makes me a better artist to sharpen my skills by working with our incredible students, learn from my colleagues, and check in with my core artistic principles and philosophies as I teach them. Do they still hold up? How can I deepen them? What are the roots of the work I do? Then I take all that good exercise and bring it back out into the field where I can rely on it and draw on it without overthinking as I move at the pace of professional work… where there’s usually not time to think about those things!

-Jim Fagan, Assistant Professor of Directing

What advice would you give your students about building a sustainable career in the arts?

Above all, be kind! Second, your career has already started! Third, there isn’t this massive divide between theater and film and digital and television. It can all be one career—different mediums of the same artwork, different crafts and skills, sure, but the more diversified your abilities, the more sustainable it will be.

Connect with Jim!

Jim Fagan is a director and writer — as well as a producer, actor, editor, and designer — whose eclectic career spans stage, screen, and tiny pocket screen. At BU, Fagan teaches Acting, Acting for Non Majors, Theater Collaboration Two, Professional Theater Initiative, Artists in Community, Theater in Practice through BU School of Theatre.

As part of BU School of Theatre’s fall 2026 season, Fagan will be directing a night of one-acts by American playwright Christopher Durang. Currently, Fagan is the resident director of The Real Kyle McCarren, running at Joe’s Pub in New York City July 18-19, 2026.

Follow Fagan on Instagram @MrJimFace, check out his online portfolio at Jim-Fagan.com, or send him a note at jimfagan@bu.edu!

About Mentioned Programs

Boston University’s directing program provides early-career professionals with the opportunity to cultivate their artistic identities and professional objectives while refining and enhancing their technical skills and range. Students are prepared for directing careers, with special emphasis on understanding the American theatre and its contemporary applications to narrative performance.

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