Directing for the Stage

Collected lecture/discussion notes. Some parts are very fragmented, but offered here as a study aid, not a primary learning source. Citations are lost. None of the thoughts are original.

Overall purpose of the director: to provide a unified artistic approach to the theatrical event.

Director as

• Interpreter
• Chief executive
• Guide

Qualifications:

• Ability to see and think in images (think conceptually)
• Sensitivity to language
• Ability to empathize
• Sensitivity to theatrical & dramatic
• Ability to plan and organize

Director not separate entity until about 1850.
Earliest recognized strong directors:

• Prince George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
• Richard Wagner

Process

Preparation

1. Find play in script
2. Find most appropriate approach
3. Assimilate author, times, etc.

Look for in a play to direct:

• Say something about life
• Move emotionally
• Artistic shape
• Essentially theatrical

• -Reading of the play
      initial responses
• -Research and analysis
  • Author, period, content
  • Rereading for understanding of 6 elements
• -Consultation with other artists in production
  Series of production meetings, long conversations, generally with artistic team
• -Fixing of fundamental concept with other artists on artistic team
• -Auditions and casting
      Cold vs prepared, private vs open
• -Preparation for rehearsal
      Organization, development ideas
• -Rehearsal
  • Blocking of movement
  • Discovery & development of character and action
  • Invention: expansion, interaction
  • Polish: rhythms especially
• -Technical rehearsals
  With lights, sound, then costumes and makeup
• -Final adjustments
  • Notes taken and given before next rehearsals
  • Actor coaching
• Opening
      Director disappears
• Post mortem
      What went wrong, right

The Director's Work

Functions of the director:

1. Determines interpretation
2. Casts the show
3. Plans the production
4. Rehearses the event
5. Coordinates for public performance

I. Selection consideration:

1. Purpose of production:
   1. Organizational (money, season, etc.)
   2. Artistic (audience experiences)
   3. Educational (acting, etc. experience)
   4. Experimental (exploration of art form)
2. Resources:
   1. money
   2. space
   3. time
   4. personnel
3. Intrinsic merit: highest artistic merit appropriate to purpose.
4. Personal preference.

Two directions for director: interpretive or creative

II. Performs analysis to determine interpretation

1. Develops concept of style and approach.
2. Performs intensive analysis of text.
3. Performs extensive research on background of text as necessary.

III. Selects and coordinates production staff.

Designers and technical people, including stage manager selected by producer. Typically the director is consulted, may have first preference, almost always given veto authority.

Other assistants:

• Production assistant / rehearsal secretary
• Assistant director
• Assistant stage managers

Stage manager:

1. Principal responsibility: to run the company and be responsible for all aspects of execution of the performance.
2. Keep master prompt script.
3. Usually in charge of setting up calls, auditions, rehearsal preparations, etc.
4. Principal liaison between director, designers, and other production staff.
5. May also serve as rehearsal secretary.

Director approves plans and designs of production staff.

IV. Auditions and casting

3 approaches:

1. Open audition (cattle call)
2. Audition with selective call-back
3. Closed invitational audition.

1. Determine audition material
   1. Greatest potential for demonstration of skills
   2. Best combination of characters
   3. Material for all major and distinctly different roles.
2. Organization:
   1. Cold readings
   2. Prepared briefly
   3. Actors' material
3. Considerations in casting
   1. Physical and vocal appropriateness
   2. Potential for growth and directability
   3. Character range
   4. Company cohesiveness
   5. Needs of student (in educational theatre) for stretch.
   6. Public relations
   7. Total effect of show.
4. Consider needs for:
   1. Understudy
   2. Standby
   3. Double casting

V. Rehearsal

1. Schedule:
   1. Most effective use of actors' time
   2. Coordination with musicians choreographers, fight coaches, movement coaches.
   3. Work in objectives (blocking, character, etc.)
   4. -Generally 5-7 weeks in educ theatre.
      -Most amateur: 2-4 hrs/evening, 5 evenings/week, 4-8 weeks.
      -Professional: 4 weeks or fewer, 8 hours/day.
      -Developing scripts rehearse several months.
      -Summer theatre: 1-3 weeks, 12-16 hours/day.
2. Breakdown:
   1. Preparatory (1-5 days): Reading, analysis
   2. Blocking (5 days): Setting large movement
   3. Building (10 days): Lines, character, business, rhythm
   4. Polish (5 days): Rehearsal costumes & props, on unfinished set.
   5. Technical (2 days): Incorporating lighting, sound, scenic changes, cuing, etc.
   6. Dress (2-3 days): Performance conditions, including costumes & makeup
   7. Performance.
3. Directorial approaches to actors
   • -Must approach each actor on her own terms and in harmony with actor's methods of working.
   • -Director acts as ideal audience and gives actor view of self, since it is one art the artist can't see how she's doing.

-Four directorial approaches to rehearsal:

1. Dictatorial: Director dictates interpretation and movement. Reserved for brilliant directors with ego-free performers (übermarionette).
2. Authoritarian: Director determines appropriate interpretation and attempts to get actors' support. Frequently the only possible approach in very amateur theatre.
3. Collaborative: Director works out interpretation with actors, but reserves final say. Very desirable approach for educational theatre with broad range of abilities and training.
4. Democratic: Director serves as advisor and critic in terms of interpretation worked out by company. Demands highly trained and talented performers and more time.

Interpretation

Analysis

1. Determines literary and generic styles
       Comedy, tragedy; expressionism, realism, etc.
2. Analyzes principal ideas and themes
       Many principal ideas and potential thematic statements in every play.
3. Analyzes dynamic rhythm
       Flow of conflict, crisis and climax creates a rhythm of tensions an suspense in event.
4. Breaks down into major divisions according to flow or rhythm and ideas (actions, French scenes)
5. Breaks down into smaller divisions according to intentions and motivations of characters.
       Premise: each moment in life has active intent which can be stated as "I want to . . . ."
6. Determines thematic concept and directorial approach
   • Thematic concept: statement of intended them
   • Directorial approach: realism, expressionism, mixed media, etc.
   • This matters in collaboration with designers.

Konstantin Stanislavsky

Stanislavskian Analysis:

• Beat, intentional unit
• Action
• Spine
• Objective, superobjective

Blocking and Movmeent:

One of the most improtant concerns of director is visual symbolism of play.
    Two aspects of visual symbolism:

1. Theatrical dominance (most important aspect of scene for theatrical reasons)
2. Human relationship (how characters relate at particular moment)

Visual dominance is controlled through emphasis and subordination in pictorialization and movement.

Means of emphasis in picturization:

1. Body position
2. Height
3. Stage area
4. Visual focus of character
5. Spatial relationshps
6. Technical aspects (costumes, lighting, scenery)

Movement:

1. Traffic directing
2. character relationship
3. Tempo & rhythm
4. Situation, style, type, etc.

Important: In any occasion in which there is a conflict between the visual symbolism and the text, the audience will believe what it sees.

Blocking practice:

1. Total pre-blocking, even down to turns and gestures - goes with dictatorial approach.
2. Pre-blocking large movement - traffic directing and major picture relationships.
3. No pre-blocking - tends to a democratic approach, time consuming

Directing as a Profession

Training:

1. Familiarity with all major approaches to acting
2. Capability for rapport and leadership
3. Sensitivity to visual and aural aesthetics.
4. Awareness of dramatic literature and theory.
5. Understanding of history, sociology, philosophy.
6. Store of experience and observation.
7. Imagination
8. Desire to say something

Professional directors:

• Hired by producer
• Usually works between playwright and actors
• Not generally in as strong a position except super big names who completely revise approach and show sells on their name.
• Influence on show is proportional to relative eminence of name to actors' names.
• Represented by union in 1962: Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. (SSDC)

Cameron-Hoffman on directing

Director never becomes an actor or designer
Director as a distinct individual developed form mid 119th C.
Two directions in 1960s:
    Classical & method (text authority)
    Independent (performance authority)
"Directorial approach: the total sense of the play that can be translated into performance."
    Begun with large undefined image or idea
    Primary suspense and how to make theatrical
    Contributions of characters, etc.

Director and actor

Director must reach every actor on own terms, without forcing change Director influences interpretation to ensure unity

Structuring scene: use
    Motivational units
    Rhythmical beat
    French scene

Directorial approaches:

• Dictatorial: director dictates interpretation
• Authoritarian: director determines interpretation
• Collaborative: director works out interpretation with actors
• Democratic: everybody decides interpretation

Intensity and progression: Progression of growth of intensity, information, revelation, etc. Rhythm and tempo not just speed.

Style: "the way in which theatre in a particular place at a particular time . . ." Classics have own form, structure, theatricality; protect against eliminating what is classic. "The object must always be to make the effects of time disappear, to give the classic the immediacy of a new play."

Production period:

• -4 weeks with competent director and existing production staff.
• -Less: machine directing and cliché
• -More than 6 weeks: self-indulgence and waste of vitality.

Auditions and casting:

"Object of an audition is to give the actor every chance to show his abilities, not to test his nerve or to prove the paternal power of the director."

Rehearsals:

1. preparatory (1-5 days)
2. blocking (5 days)
3. building (10 days)
4. Polishing (5 days)
5. Technical (2 days)
6. Dress (2-3 days)

Total (25-30 days - 4.5-5.5 weeks)

Director keeps prompt script:
    Comments on play, character
    Blocking
    Ground plans

Emphasis tools: no one tool is used in isolation
Pictorialism:
    Stage position
    Level
    Lighting
Emphasis:
    Stage areas
    Body positions
    Visual focus
"The picture seen by the audience at any moment is a symbol of the play's content at that moment."

Two bases:
    Theatrical dominance: who must be emphasized
    Human relationships: how characters relate

Movement:

• Must always validate the human content of the scene - When text and movment are in conflict audience believes what it sees.
• Upstage weak, downstage strong,
• Curved and other movement for effect
• Precise, clear, definite, in harmony with text.

Brockett on directing

2 concepts: interpretive vs. creative

Duties:
    Determines interpretation
    Casts
    Plans production with playwright, designers
    Rehearses
    Coordinates for final performance

1. Interpretation:
   • Structure and aesthetic considerations
   • Technical aspects
   • Research
2. Casting:
   1. Open tryout
   2. Auditions with callbacks
   3. Invitational or closed
   Considerations;
   • Physical and vocal
   • Potential for growth
   • Range
   • Total effect of show
   Understudies: Small roles ready to do biggies
       Standby's: names ready to step in.
       Doublecast: Musicals, etc.

Each actor works his own way
Actor's ego is very involved
Director acts as ideal audience
"Critic, teacher, leader, friend, disciplinarian."

Director's means

1. Stage picture
2. Movement, gesture, business
3. Voice and speech

Stage picture:
    Situation
    Dominant emotion
    Character relationships
    Composition, mood, style, period, type of play

Movement:
    1. emphasis
    2. appropriate to character
    3. appropriate to situation
    4. appropriate to type of play
    5. tempo-rhythm of conflict

Rehearsing:
    -Amateur: 5 evenings, 3-4 hours, for 4-8 weeks.
    -Professional: 4 weeks, 8 hours/day
    Developing scripts: several months
    Summer theatre: 1-3 weeks, 12-16 hours/day.

Schedule:

1. Most efficient use of actors
2. Broken down in objectives or phases
   1. reading, analyzing, understanding
   2. blocking: some pre-block, some don't, most combine
   3. dialogue
   4. character, business, transitions, ensemble, progression, line readings (more complex for musical)
   5. integration: tech - lights, sound, set, props, costumes, techs, dress.

Assistants:

• Rehearsal secretary: take notes, etc.
• Assistant director: rehearsal secretary and coach, liaison
• Stage manager: Runs show, also above, runs rehearsals, casting, company. Keeps master script.