Director Ben Gavitt could be called a creature of habit.

He’s plenty familiar with the cast of his next project, the performance space where it will be staged and, most of all, the playwright who wrote it.

Gavitt is directing “The Love List,” which opens Friday at Youngstown Playhouse’s Moyer Room for a two-weekend run.

He directed “Here on the Flight Path” in the same space last May, and two of the three actors in “The Love List” — Brendan Boyle and Jaclyn-Sarah Senich — were in the cast of “Flight Path.” The third actor in “Love List,” Shawn Lockaton, was Gavitt’s stage manager on “Flight Path.”

Relying on those he was familiar with was driven, in part, by practicality.

“Brendan Boyle and Jaclyn-Sarah Senich, I figured, let’s just grab them together, because they’ve got good chemistry together,” Gavitt said. “With Shawn, it was just, ‘Hey, do you want to be in this show with Brendan and Jaclyn?’ That way we didn’t have to have any auditions or anything. We could just kind of meet at Panera Bread, read the script a couple times, and then just start rehearsing after the holidays. At that time, the Playhouse had (Millennial Theatre Company’s) ‘The Prom’ going on and (Rust Belt Theater Company’s) ‘How the Drag Queen Stole Christmas,’ so they were pretty busy, and we had to wait our turn.”

“The Love List,” like “Here on the Flight Path,” is written by Norm Foster, a prolific Canadian playwright who is well known in his homeland but less produced in the U.S. Gavitt has directed “Flight Path” at three different theaters, and “The Love List” will be the fourth play of Foster’s that he’s directed.

He described it as a cross between the ’70s sitcom “Three’s Company” and the ’80s film “Weird Science.”

“It’s kind of romantic comedy-ish,” Gavitt said. “These two guys end up getting a love list from a gypsy woman, and they try to write down the 10 best qualities that they find in a woman, and then all of a sudden, she kind of appears out of nowhere. They don’t know where she came from, or who she is or what she’s doing.

“They start to build a relationship with her and stuff. But then, little by little, they get annoyed by things that she does or whatever, so then they have to erase something on the list and write something new down, and then she has to change. The actress has to change and start doing whatever they wrote down.”

While Boyle has the largest of the three roles, Senich has the most challenging part because her character has to adapt and change to suit the two men’s whims, from southern belle to vocally challenged singer.

Gavitt said she’s handling the role’s demands well, and he believes the experience she has playing opposite Boyle (they also were in the Playhouse’s production of “The Thanksgiving Play”) has benefited the comedy.

“It’s almost like she has multiple personalities,” he said. “She’s doing a wonderful job with it.”

Gavitt was supposed to direct “The Love List” at another theater near Canton several years ago, but the COVID-19 pandemic kept it from happening. He’s enjoying finally having an opportunity to present it.

“‘Flight Path’ is kind of like my baby, but I think out of all four of them, this one is growing on me because it’s a lot more conversational,” he said. “If you take the ‘Weird Science’ part out of it, it’s kind of like real-life conversations, just these two guys hanging out in their apartment and talking about girls and stuff like that.”

Gavitt won’t run out of Foster plays to direct any time soon.

“He actually has 75 plays (written) over a 29-year span, and I’ve only done four of them,” he said. “I’ve only gotten to read a couple others, and I’m hoping to do them in the future.”

If you go …

WHAT: “The Love List”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 9

WHERE: Moyer Room, Youngstown Playhouse, 600 Playhouse Lane, Youngstown

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $17 and are available online at experienceyourarts.org and by calling 330-788-8739.