The film won the Best Independent Film award at the Seattle Film Festival in 1998. His stage career includes roles in American Days and Yentl. He was awarded an Obie for The Dining Room. Shea is a New Englander, born in New Hampshire in 1949 and raised on Massachusetts. He has an MFA from Yale in directing from the School of Drama. He has two children with his current wife, Melissa, and one with his first, Laura. Splitting his time between New York City and Nantucket Island, he is one of the founders of the Nantucket Film Festival and Artistic Director of the Nantucket Theatre Workshop.