...that I would be able to rehearse and blog at the same time. I duly made an ass of myself. For anyone who's still paying attention, rehearsals are going very well. I am having the time of my life. I'll be back very soon with an update.
...just what it is a director does all day when getting ready to start rehearsals for a play. Well, wonder no longer. I will tell you what I do - thought I warn you I am, in some respects, an unusual director.
Put simply, I read and I think.
I read the play over and over again. Sometimes I read it slowly, puzzling over words and moments. (The play I am currently working on calls for some complicated staging, so I am spending more time thinking about possible ways of blocking the thing than I ordinarily would). Other times I read swiftly, picking up the tone of the work, letting ideas surprise me.
Then I think. I think while I'm reading and I think when I'm not reading. I think about the play at the gym. I think about it when running errands and doing "producery" things. I think about it while eating. I think about it when lying in bed in the morning and when trying to sleep at night.
I do this until I know the play. I know the story. I understand the characters and the mood and the action.
And that's it.
Now don't get me wrong, there are tons of other activities I'm called upon to engage in. I talk to the set designer and the lighting designer and the costume designer and the technical director. I answer their questions and ask them questions of my own. (I am serving as my own sound designer for this show, so I've been working a good deal on that as well). I also did a bit of research months ago about the era in which this play is set.
These are some things I don't do: I don't do a beat to beat breakdown. I don't think of an action or motivation for each line. I don't have the blocking written in stone.
I don't fault directors who do those things - whatever works for you. But I have very little formal training. I learned by watching my father direct. I've been watching his rehearsals since I was three years old. It has become almost instinctive for me. I don't know how I would teach someone else to do it.
I don't have a "concept" for the show.
Theatre is a collaborative medium and the actors aren't my puppets. What the show ends up being is so dependent on what they bring to the table. With any luck it will be far better than anything I've thought of ahead of time.
I believe very strongly that the role of the theatre director (film is somewhat different) is to be a facilitator, not an author. I see myself as more of a craftsman than an artist. My job is to serve the text and the actors, to make sure that we are all telling the same story, to make sure that the characters make sense and to act as a stand-in for the audience, to make sure they get all the info they need. There is a great deal of creativity involved in all this, of course, but the director is not really a "creative artist" in the sense that the author and the actors are.
Now I realize many would disagree. (This is actually a somewhat contentious issue). And you know what - I don't really have a problem with that. I've seen great work by directors who I know take a different approach. More power to them. I've seen great work by directors who are of my way of thinking. Yippee. What matters in the end is the work itself. The audience doesn't care about our theories. They just want a good show.
When we were children my sister and I pretended all the time. We didn't let the fact that we were living in a small house in a small town hamper us in anyway. With a few discarded clothes from the "dress up clothes basket" and a few simple household items to aid us, we could be anywhere at any time doing anything.
We could be French aristocrats in the days of the Revolution, dodging the guillotine with the help of the Scarlet Pimpernel. We could be flappers solving mysteries in 1920s New York. We could be members of Robin Hood's merry band. We could be much more mundane things too (grocery store clerks, waitresses, bus drivers).
My mother says that we were a joy to watch. (She always tried to observe us discreetly, lest we become self-conscious). She says that we seemed to believe so completely in the reality of what we were pretending that our belief was infectious - she could always tell exactly what we were supposed to be (antebellum Southern belles, say) even though we were really just little girls with old bathrobes tied around our waists.
So why do I mention all this childhood play?
All my resolutions to post daily crumble to dust at my feet. In my defense we go from crisis to crisis here at the Small Town Theatre. None of them are fatal crises, so I can't really complain.
Nevertheless, I think we are in need of a little divine intervention to solve some of this week's problems. And really, how hard should that be? As I pointed out to my mother yesterday, how many professional theatres were founded by Benedictine monks? How many are run by faithful Catholics? How busy can Saint Genesius really be? Maybe, like a good man of the theatre, the saint is simply biding his time, waiting for the most dramatic moment to come to our aid.
As a director, I have a few thoughts on when that moment would be. But I'm sure he knows best. I'm sure of it. Absolutely.
...it's not a question of reason. It's a question of love." - A Man For All Seasons
Paul Scofield is dead. I wish I'd had the chance to see him on stage. His (few) film performances never failed to awe. Watch The Train. Watch Quiz Show. (The scene where his son confesses his transgressions never fails to kick me in the gut - the disbelief, the horror, the pity, the waste). And, of course, watch A Man For All Seasons. What an actor.
He sounds like he was a lovely man to boot. I get a kick out of everyone's astonishment that he lived such a "normal" life: wife (just the one), kids, long country walks. I know lots of actors like that. Some of the best are like that.
I own him a lot. He is 3/4ths of the reason why I have a devotion to Saint Thomas More. Call me a rank sentimentalist, but I have this vision of the late Chancellor meeting Mr. Scofield at the gates. "At last! Welcome. Great job. I have just a couple of notes." Maybe you have to be a director to find that amusing.
Also, he was something of a dish, wasn't he? RIP
Sorry, sorry, sorry for the light-as-air blogging. We are currently in an all out push at the theatre where I am an Associate Artistic Director. We open a show next week. We are busy putting up the set - and doing a thousand other things.
For the last week my life has whipped by in a blur, something like this:
Build, build. Paint, paint. Cut self. Bleed. Decide to use flat of hand instead of hammer. Get unsightly blood blister. Curse own stupidity. Try to be good leader. Feel am failing miserably. Have people quit with very little notice. People suck. Have other people really step up and help out. People are marvelous. Blood blister turns into vast, spreading bruse. Find self involved in budgetary matters against own better judgement. Get paint all over self and clothes. Wonder why water-based paint won’t wash off hands. Bruse fading. Find out show is running too long. Hard to be good leader when can't seem to master use of screw gun. Worry that we messed up Actors Equity paper work. Find out that we didn’t. Email in box overflowing. More building, more painting. What do you mean the props person has vanished? So tired feel like walking through water. Not nearly as far along as should be. How will we get finished in time? Miserable. Happy. Why am I doing this? What would I rather be doing? Too busy to answer that question.
Yes, it's as delightful as it sounds.
I think. But I could be wrong; I'm not an expert on the finer points of grindstone operation.
I woke this morning after my long, restful sleep, hit the early mass over at Saint Victor's, then walked to the bagel place and indulged in one of their scrumptious bagels (with butter. I gave up cream cheese for Lent, only to discover that I actually prefer bagels with butter. Can't help feeling that this defeated the purpose). Then back home for a truly excellent morning of work on the pilot script I'm writing. Someone with a certain amount of influence has expressed an interest in reading a pilot script if I write one. So I'm trying to write one as quickly as possible.
Continue reading "Putting Your Nose to a Grindstone Would Really, Really Hurt" »
I will be heading out soon for another round of theatre company auditions.
I suppose that auditions are a necessary evil, but I don't use the word "evil" lightly. No amount of respect, politeness, interest and generosity on the part of the auditor (and I do aim to produce all those things) can disguise the brutality inherent in the process.
You, the actor, are forced to come in and expose your very self to the judgment of people who are often strangers and (even more often) idiots. You are also forced to display your talents in a highly artificial setting, under conditions very different from those under which most actors actually perform.
There has to be a better way.
But there doesn't seem to be. Not in the real world. I have a few thoughts about auditions (and their ideal alternatives). But that will be another post for now I must dash. We're seeing tons of actors this evening and I don't want to be late. That would be disrespectful.
Another link from my sister: The Times (London): Why are so many of the West End's offerings revivals?" Good thoughtful stuff this, not just the usual sniffing at producers' and their silly commercial instincts. I am particularly sympathetic to reason number 7:
"When we go to the theatre, we want to see great acting. And there’s a reason why great actors cling to great writers: they give them great parts. 'Actors love doing Chekhov,' says Birmingham Rep’s artistic director, Rachel Kavanaugh, who’s about to stage Uncle Vanya. 'He’s so nonjudgmental. He says, here are these people, what do you think about them? The characters are complicated, they’re never a mouthpiece for an idea.'"
I say this as the Associate Artistic Director of a theatre that is (in large part) dedicated to the development of new plays: the reason the classics get done so very often is simply that they're...good. Actors like to act in good plays, directors like to direct them, and (much of the time, anyway) audiences want to go see them.
What we all want to do is find tomorrow's classics today... but that's the subject of another post.
