Is This a Compliment?

"You go to New York to be aggressive in the theater. You're under the burden of blowing the roof off — or what's the point? But in fact there are many points to hit before the roof is destroyed. Here, you don't feel you have to make the greatest artistic statement of the decade."

That's actor Stephen Spinella, discussing his directing debut, Speaking in Tongues, for L.A.'s Open Fist Theatre in the L.A. Times.