Category Archives: Directing

Who’s Right? The Director or the Actor?

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Photo by Sherise VD on Unsplash

Recently I’ve realized that I have, on different occasions, written contradictory statements:

The first was that the director has the last word.

The second was that the actor has the final say.

Even I can see that’s a problem! So what gives?

Sometimes the director and an actor are in conflict about the meaning of the play, the character — whatever. I’m talking major disagreement here, not the little stuff. The question is:  how does this get resolved?

The optimistic answer is, through honest and open discussion, wherein a happy medium is found or where one person convinces the other of the “rightness” of their argument. But truthfully, optimism does not always carry the day. People can be very good at digging in their heels, and I can tell you from experience that two directors can view the same play through radically different lenses.

I once worked with an actor who really knew how to chew the scenery. He was a smart, thoughtful guy, and very good as an actor when he stopped trying so hard, but he was inclined to think that he wasn’t interesting unless he went very broad (always in an unbelievable way). I directed him in a very funny “letter” play, and I really worked to get him to pull back to a “normal” over-the-top place. He grudgingly went along with me and delivered a wonderful performance, only to go slightly off the rails on closing night, when a rollicking audience laughed so much that he couldn’t stop himself from giving them more of what he thought they wanted. (Although I had “tamed” him enough at that point that even his “over-the-top” wasn’t quite so out of control as it usually was.)

Then I acted in a very challenging play with him, one which he interpreted his role in an entirely different way than the director (and I, in all honesty) thought the playwright intended; indeed, he’d found psychological subtext that was dark and humorless (and this was a comedy). He pontificated for quite a while on the elaborate meaning he’d arrived at while Charlie (the director) and I listened in disbelief (I can’t speak for the rest of the cast). Ultimately, Charlie refused to back down and the actor agreed to play it his way since he was the director. He never fully gave himself over to Charlie’s interpretation and the play suffered for it, but he respected that it was Charlie’s call to make and at least got himself in the ballpark of where he was supposed to be.

I would argue that this this is what you need to do. If you disagree with the director, it’s unfortunate, but ultimately, the director is the one who is holding the rudder and determining where the ship is headed, and you, as the actor, need to go on the director’s journey and not your own. The reason for this is that there are other actors in the play, and if THEY are going along with the director’s vision and you aren’t — well, that’s a disconnect, isn’t it? You matching the rest of the cast in terms of where they are going is less disturbing to the audience than you being “right” and everyone else being “wrong”. It’s the old story of the mother who told the colonel after a military parade, “My Johnny was the only one in step!”

But here’s what I’m going to suggest before you get to that point:

Consider the possibility that you might be wrong.

I know, that’s a painful thought. But stay with me. . .

First, operate on the assumption that the director has done his homework and might have a point. Put aside your own notions for the moment and consider the director’s points. Are they logical and justifiable? (Because people are such interesting creatures, it is possible that there are two ways to explain behavior, and you and the director might have separately latched on to these two possibilities for your character.)

Incidentally, that honest conversation with the director should be had as soon as the disagreement is apparent, and hopefully this is early in the rehearsal process. Don’t consider the director’s points on your own.  Dialogue between the two of you is really critical.

If you can answer “yes” to this question, then you might consider adjusting your own interpretation. But let’s say that despite seeing the director’s point of view, you can’t seem to modify your interpretation. Yes, the director’s choices are logical and justifiable, but they are still WRONG!

Now check out the other actors’ choices; are they in line with the director’s vision or your own? If you are the odd man out, then you should probably consider changing your own interpretation. “Right” is not the only consideration here; a coherent and consistent production is also important, and probably trumps your own needs.

I once directed a play in which one of the leads and I saw her character VERY differently. I loved her audition, which was SO on the mark, but in the first two weeks of rehearsals, she talked about the character in ways that were diametrically opposed to both what I thought about the character and what I saw her do in auditions. We had some conversations about this difference, and I thought we’d resolved them, only to have her, two weeks before opening, start making choices I found inexplicable and which had a very negative impact on the production as a whole. It was a very funny comedy, and her choices took much of the humor away. Nothing I did or said seemed to make a difference in her interpretation.

I got lucky in that production, because the actress had some actor friends who helped her work on the character in a way that I couldn’t, and she came to an interpretation that was very much in line with what I’d hoped for, but to which I had not contributed at all. I took from this that I failed as a director; actors are all so different that we spend a lot of time figuring out just how Actor A needs to be treated to get the best performance from him, and so on down the line for as many actors as you’ve cast. Usually we’re right about how they need to be handled, but not always.

But since I couldn’t seem to communicate effectively with this actress, that’s my bad. Still, I think that had the actress (who while blessed with a lot of natural talent, had only been acting for a couple of years and had things yet to learn) would have been better off (as would the entire show) had she been willing to engage in an open-ended dialogue that didn’t assume a “right” answer at the beginning.

Or was I the one who was unwilling? In this case, I don’t think so, but sometimes I am. Sometimes actors have a completely different take on something that absolutely works, a take I didn’t even see before they mention it. Sometimes we don’t come to agreement on small moments and I concede the point, because (after all), they are the ones in front of the audience! But I don’t think I’ve ever watched a performance and thought (aside from the over-actor mentioned above), “Gee, I wish they’d done it my way, it would have been so much better!” Their choices have ended up being just fine.

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To Use, or Not to Use (Stage Directions)?

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So this farce I’m directing (I know, I owe you more posts on it, and I promise, I will deliver), is Boeing Boeing, and there is a scene in the second act which describes Robert, our leading man, going into the bathroom, washing his face, strutting around a bit, trying Bernard’s after shave, getting some in his eye, and covering his face with a towel while he tries to get the after shave out of his eye.

Actually, it says he covers his head with a towel, and how that is supposed to help his eye, I don’t quite know.

It also makes no sense to me that he goes to wash his face, because the audience can’t see into the bathroom, and they’re going to wonder what’s happened to him.  I’m also unfamiliar with after shave that comes in a spray bottle, but — that’s neither here nor there.

My actor has played the role before, in a production that was apparently very faithful to the 2008 Broadway staging with Mark Rylance, and the “strutting” was more detailed than that, which the script thankfully does not describe for us.  My actor says the shtick worked some nights and fell flat on others — which doesn’t particularly surprise me.

I had no intention of using these particular stage directions.  I made another suggestion, which ended up with Robert having his face buried in a newspaper, addressing the essential need of the scene — to have Gretchen not realize he isn’t Bernard.  I thought what my actor did with it was creative, truthful, and very humorous, but he’s uncomfortable with it.  Fine, I said.  Let’s look for something else to do, and if we don’t find it — quite honestly, I don’t care if all you do is come out of the bedroom, sit down, and read the newspaper.  That will be perfectly sufficient.

Now, as it happens, I have a copy of the original 1967 script (in such pristine condition that I am the one who has broken the spine), and so I decided to check out the original and see if the stage directions are the same.

They aren’t.

Guess what they are?

Robert comes out of the bedroom, sits down, and reads the newspaper.

Same script, albeit different translations — which just means that the “translator” of the new version has edited the original to make it a little more contemporary, a little shorter, and in a case or two, a little funnier.  I’m not sure that it is a genuinely new translation, because the original translator is dead and most of the lines are identical.  Where there are changes, there is no way that someone could interpret the words that differently.  No, I think they decided to revive the play and just needed it cleaned up a bit, and the estates of Marc Camoletti and Beverley Cross agreed.

So it is clear from this example that the stage directions in question were NOT written by the playwright, but were, indeed (as I have always argued most stage directions are) the product of the Broadway production stage manager’s script, which is the one which goes to the printer.  You simply can’t argue that they are the playwright’s intention, because they aren’t.  No, they are actions that were probably created by Mark Rylance and are tailor-made for him — and difficult for another actor to pull off as successfully.

So do I feel any obligation to use these stage directions?

Nyet.

The other reason I don’t want to use them is because they just don’t make sense to me.  Of all the things in this fabulous apartment that Robert wants to explore — the bathroom?  Which the audience can’t see?

And with all due respect to Rylance, I’m not sure that I agree with all of what I’ve seen of his performance.  I think Robert is a little more interesting than his portrayal.  So why would I want to be hemmed in by these actions?

Now, Rylance is a fine actor, and I didn’t see the Broadway production, and it is entirely possible that his interpretation is entirely valid.  I don’t happen to share it, and I’m not sure that my actor does, either.  That may be Rylance’s truth, but if it isn’t my Robert’s truth, then it has no place in this production.

Simple as that.

 

Backseat Directors, Part I

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One of my readers has asked me to talk about backseat directors, and since I am all about giving you what you want, here it is!

Backseat directors are typically other actors in the show who decide, for any of a variety of reasons, that they need to give advice to other actors in the show.

The most frequent reasons?

  1. The director is a novice or otherwise incompetent.  This happens especially in community theater.  Someone is directing their first show, which can be very overwhelming, and they are doing the best they can, but they are living in a blur and can’t see/fix everything.  Or the director is just clueless and the experienced actors want to save the show because, after all, they are in it and they don’t want to be embarrassed in front of their friends come performance time.  This can be a good thing.  Not always, but often.
  2. They are mentoring a newbie.  Sometimes (again, especially in community theater), an actor is doing his first or second show and is really a fish out of water.  An experienced actor sees this and wants to help them, especially if the director is not spending enough time helping the newbie.  This is often good.  “Here’s how to time your entrance.”  “Don’t be afraid to touch me if you feel that’s what your character would do.”  “Just remember to not turn upstage, but to always turn downstage.”
  3. They think they have a lot to offer other actors.  This can be a good thing or a not so good thing.  Mostly a not-so-good thing.One of my students, a woman who had never acted before taking my class, was cast in a show at the local community theater.  The lead actor in the show had a business performing one-man shows based on historical characters (like Mark Twain) at venues around the country (libraries, etc.).

    Actually, he was the inspiration for my post, “The Difference Between Acting and Impersonating,” which is the single most popular post I’ve ever written.  (I’m still puzzled about that.)  I forget the details now, but he gave my student advice that was in direct contradiction to what I had told her mattered in acting, and so she asked me about what he’d said to her.

    It was this conversation with her that made me understand that what I was doing in acting class was really different and effective.  If it hadn’t been, she would never have questioned what he was telling her.

    But the bottom line was that his advice wasn’t useful.  He thought it was, because he’d made a living as an impersonator, and he mistakenly thought he was acting, not impersonating.  But all he was doing was encouraging a fellow actor to go down the wrong road.  Fortunately, she figured this out herself and was just confirming it with me.

    But if you’re lucky enough to have an experienced actor take you under his wing and to speak on your behalf to the director in a way that you wouldn’t be courageous enough to, that can be a very good thing.

    If you’re in this position, just look at what the actor in question is doing.  If it’s believable, then the advise is probably good.  If it isn’t believable — smile, say thank you, and do what you think is right.

  4. They have ulterior motives.  This is a nice way of saying that they want to control what you are doing, often to the benefit of their own performance, although sometimes it is just ego on their part.

Before I expand my thoughts on this last point, let me say this:  I love the theater.  And I love the people that create theater.  But the nature of the beast is that theater attracts, among others, some creative types who are insecure, who need lots of stroking, who boost their own self-esteem by stepping on other’s, and who aren’t particularly self-aware.  This is okay — we’re all on the same journey as people, and we all learn what we need to about being human in our own way, on our own schedule.

So it’s important to remember that the people who resort to some immature behaviors are nevertheless doing the best they can with the cards they’ve been dealt.  To cut them some slack, and actively hope that one day, they will learn to love themselves just as they are, to make the most of their peculiar and individual talents, and to not see the rest of us as a threat to their existence.

But in the meantime, we’ve got to deal with the way they are playing their hand.

I’ll go into more detail on this last group next time.

 

 

When the Stage Directions Matter

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Cinderella wedding

The inspiration for my play, Happily Ever After, came about because I started thinking about the fact that all fairy tales end with the wedding, and so kids who grow up reading them know how to aspire for a wedding, but have no real understanding of what happens next or how to navigate the next 50 years.  The emphasis on courtship over marriage has probably led many couples into a morass, pre-marital counseling notwithstanding.  I had no idea where I was going to go with it, but that was what put my seat in the chair.  What followed wound up being more layered and philosophical than I had anticipated, or even than I knew prior to attending the rehearsal of it.

While watching the rehearsal, I put on my director’s hat, contemplating how I would deal with the issues the director was facing if I was in his shoes.  As a result, I had to analyze my own play in a way that I hadn’t done, and so I learned some interesting things about it!

It was in analyzing the play that I finally figured out why I was uncomfortable with the changes made to the stage directions that end the play.  It turned out that the changes left the audience with two messages that were both in direct contradiction to what I had been trying to say over the course of the play.

Surprising that movement could have such a dramatic effect, huh?

Without reading the play, you may not fully understand why this is, but I’ll give it a stab anyway.

Here’s the original stage directions (remember, this is the continuation of the fairy tale — in this case, Cinderella).  I should say that the dialogue that precedes the stage directions makes it clear that, in the privacy of their bedchambers, the Prince invites her to dance.

(She brightens at this, and moves into his arms at a safe distance.  They start to waltz, and one of them — it doesn’t matter who — starts to hum.  Da-de-da.  It doesn’t matter whether the one humming can carry a tune.  It may even be better if they can’t.  Now they are both humming.  They may even laugh at how bad they are, which only emboldens them to sing louder.  As the song goes on, they gradually move closer together.  And eventually, they are kissing.  Not the chaste sort of kiss as at the beginning of the play, but the happily-ever-after sort of kiss.)

Now, here’s the changed version:

(She brightens at this, and moves into his arms at a safe distance as an orchestra begins to play.  They waltz a few steps.  She stumbles and nearly falls, but he catches her.  She looks up at him, and there is a spark.  She grabs his head and pulls him to her, planting a firm kiss on his mouth.  He sweeps her into his arms and carries her into the bedroom.)

Without knowing anything about the play, there are five distinct differences between these two descriptions:

  1. In the original, there is no orchestra, or else it is too faint to be heard, and that is why they start humming.  In the revision, we clearly hear the full orchestra.
  2. In the original, there is a shared experience which has nothing to do with kissing or sex (humming while they dance, in a silly sort of moment between two people who barely know each other but are going to be spending their lives together).  In the revision, this is replaced by her stumbling as they waltz.
  3. In the original, the kiss is a gradual melding as they begin to relax together.  In the revision, there is sudden switch that goes off in her head that provokes the kiss.
  4. In the original, the kiss is mutual.  In the revision, she clearly kisses him.
  5. In the original, there is a blackout on the kiss.  In the revision, he whisks her off of her feet and takes her into the bedroom.

Without having the entire play to view it in context, #1 can fairly easily be dismissed as not being critical.

The other four may be critical.  First off, the original seems to emphasize the romantic over the passionate.  Sexual desire is clearly at play in the revision.

Secondly, the original has the shared moment of non-romantic, non-sexual silliness, and the revision doesn’t have a comparable moment.

So what can we take away from this?

Before changing stage directions at the beginning or end of a scene or play, you need to carefully study them in the context of what the playwright was trying to accomplish or is trying to say.  Opening moments set a tone, and closing moments — especially at the end of a play — are the playwright’s final word on the subject.  You want to make sure that you are, up to the end, telling the playwright’s story, and not your own.  Also, when the stage directions are more than the minimal (he doffs his hat and exits), they are effectively substituting for dialogue and so probably deserve a similar fealty, at least in terms of intention.

Understanding the playwright’s intention is critical in changing stage directions that are more than simply practical (she sits down; he pours a drink; they turn out the lights and exit upstairs).  If the director had kept the sexual overtones out of it and found a comparable non-sexual moment to replace the humming and laughter, I might have been disappointed (or not, if he found a better way of accomplishing it than what I wrote), but I wouldn’t be uncomfortable with it.  He would clearly have gotten the point of what I was trying to say and simply found an alternative way to say the same thing.

I could have written the “la-di-da” into the dialogue, and probably will so that future directors will understand that it is a non-negotiable element of the play.

So here’s my argument for why the changes reversed the intended meaning of the play:

I associate the sexual desire and attraction between a new couple with the fairy tale story; while critical to beginning a happy ending, it is insufficient in and of itself.  Love and friendship are the more important elements.  By removing the humming, you remove the friendship; by dispensing with the gradual, mutual kiss, you remove the love; and in its stead, you’ve got passionate desire on both sides (her kiss, his carting her off to the bed).  A misplaced emphasis on sex has ruined many a marriage, and that was part of why I wrote the play.  When you end on that note, you are saying, “This is a fine way to go about it.”

The director said he chose to have her initiate the kiss because she had been avoiding it up until that point.  That’s fine, but if I wanted that 180 degree turn, I would have written it that way.  Making her the aggressor makes her a very different girl (and him a very different man).  Before you make a 180 degree change, you need to be sure the script supports it.

He also said, “she stumbles and he catches her before she falls, as he will for the rest of their lives”, and it’s a sweet, if traditional concept.  However, it plays into the old-fashioned myth of the fairy tale — the white knight who will come along and save the damsel in distress and make everything perfect forever — that I had spent ten minutes unraveling and arguing was not going to produce a healthy marriage.

So change the stage directions if you have a really good reason to (I’m still not sure why they decided to change mine), but if you must, please make sure that you are being fully faithful to supporting the playwright’s intention and theme.

Hoisted On My Own Petard, or What About Those Stage Directions?

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ArrowsI’ve taken to writing plays lately (not really the reason I haven’t posted in a while — my life has been somewhat tumultuous for months, but is returning to normal).  One of them, a short play called Happily Ever After, is about to be produced.  The director invited me to a rehearsal.  Most of what they are doing is just fine; some of it misses the mark, but I also think playwrights have to accept that.  However, the ending of the play is not dialogue, but rather stage directions, and the director and cast decided to change them.  I noted the change, wondered about it, was disappointed in it, but it took a good 24 hours to fully understand why I was uncomfortable with it.

If you’ve read my posts on stage directions, you know that as a director and an actor, I largely believe in disregarding them.  For the most part, I figure that if the stage directions are really good ones, I’ll find them myself in rehearsal.  I believe in hanging on to stage directions that are needed to make the play comprehensible (e.g., he hides the gun under the seat cushion).  I believe in hanging on to the stage directions of complicated business — the climactic fight scene in Wait Until Dark not only has plot points, it is well-crafted.  The nature of Wait Until Dark is that you can’t really use a set that is much different than the original, so the fight scene can’t be much different than what Frederick Knott wrote.

I believe in hanging on to stage directions that help to indicate what I should be striving for in a scene.  Eric Coble wrote a wonderful satire, Bright Ideas, that I badly wanted to stage once upon a time.  (I still do, but directing doesn’t seem to be in the offing right now.)  There are a number of scenes where the stage directions help to clarify the playwright’s intention.  I wouldn’t blacken those out, but would keep them to remind me of what he was going for.  I might end up using his ideas, or I might come up with something more clever, but in the same vein.

For instance, Coble has a scene that involves using puppets in the way that child psychologists use dolls to help children talk about the scary things in their lives.  I may not use every puppet move he suggests if I can find a different movement that is funnier, but I’ll keep his stage directions in my script to give me a framework within which I can be creative.

The scenes that end each act also have a good bit of business that I remember thinking might need to be modified in some way, given the theater I was doing the play at.  We were a very low-budget company that rented a stage for Tech Week and the duration of performances, and so needed a very easy set that could be loaded in in a matter of hours.  I hadn’t come up with a solution by the time the production was cancelled, but I remember thinking that I needed to find a way to accomplish what Coble wrote without spending the money that it would require.  The set changes would have meant some small tweaks to the stage directions.

(If you haven’t read Bright Ideas, you should.  Coble is a very talented writer.)

So back to my play, Happily Ever After.

Some of my plays are pretty straightforward.  Happily Ever After is a play that requires a bit of thought, and I sat in the rehearsal and tried to figure out what I would say to the cast if I were the director (it was an early rehearsal, so there were still wrinkles to be ironed out.)  I realized pretty quickly that I needed to understand what it is about.  Surprised by that?  Playwrights don’t always know their play as well as you might think.  They know it works, but a certain amount of it may happen so instinctively and fortuitously that they don’t fully comprehend its idiosyncracies unless they choose to dissect it as a director or scholar would.  I put my director’s hat on with Happily Ever After and understood what I’d written as a result.

So I realized that there is yet another situation in which a director (and the cast) should at least be cautious about changing stage directions.  But I’ve reached my word limit, so that’s for the next post!

Authorial Intent in Casting

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My favorite show on Broadway right now is “Hamilton:  The Musical”, which my cousin happens to be in.  Not that her presence sways me, I’d be madly in love with the show anyway.  So I am very much on the alert for articles about it.  Here’s an article that speaks to something directors ought to be concerned with:

http://www.hesherman.com/2015/12/03/what-does-hamilton-tell-us-about-race-in-casting/

Is the Director the Boss?

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director-clipart-directorAt AACTFest2015, I gave a seminar on Blocking which was attended by both actors and directors.  One of the directors stayed after the seminar was over.  She said (quite firmly!) that when she directs, it’s her show, and her actors have to do what she wants them to.  Then she said, “but I encourage them to be creative and offer ideas during rehearsals.”

You can’t really have it both ways.

Any time (in life) we offer contradictory instructions to those around us (and yes, this is a very human thing to do and a good thing to keep in mind when you’re acting), one of those instructions will be followed and one won’t.  And guess which one wins?

The one that is most negative.

No one wants to be punished or yelled at, least of all actors who are inclined to have fragile egos.  So we take the conservative route and listen to the negative rule; in this case, “what I say, goes.”

As a director, you can only expect creativity and daring from your actors if you give them the space to be creative and daring.  That means letting them explore and suggest, and if you decide to not go with their idea, letting them down in the easiest way possible.

The more space you give them, the more they will offer you.  This means that the precedent you set in the first two weeks of rehearsal determines how creative they will be in the rest of the rehearsal period.  Exploration is like a snowball rolling downhill.  It’s small at first, but give it some time, and it becomes huge.

As a director, this means actively encouraging the actors’ input until they start responding and praising the input, even if it doesn’t work.  Do that enough early, and they start to feel comfortable that their ideas will be thoughtfully considered.

And “thoughtfully considered” is the key.

I often work with inexperienced actors, and I encourage them to offer any ideas they have despite their inexperience.  (The newbies often think that I am giving that freedom only to those with plays under their belt, but I work hard to make sure everyone knows that the invitation applies across the board.)

I do this for several reasons:  one, everyone in a production needs to be “equal”, even the actor with four lines.  Two, because I trust that human instincts are good, and so the idea from someone who has only done one play may be just as good as the idea from someone who’s done ten.  Three, because that’s how you learn, and I want every actor to leave my production with more skills than she entered it with.

Because what I’m doing in the first weeks of rehearsal is blocking, it’s an easy time to invite actors to participate:

“You look uncomfortable there.  Are you?  What would make you feel better?”

“No, that isn’t working, because we need to get her to the couch on that line.  Anyone have any ideas?”

“We’ve ended up with everyone on one side of the stage.  Let’s figure out how to get you more balanced.”

“Joe, you’re blocking Sally from this side of the audience.  Can we find a reason for you to move somewhere else?”

As I look back at these comments, I realize that I use the word “I” as infrequently as possible.  Putting on a play is a “we” activity, and I use that pronoun repeatedly to make sure the cast understands that we are all in this together and that good ideas can come from anywhere, not just me.

I’ve done shows where an actor offers an idea that I know won’t work, and in the interest of saving time, I’m tempted to say so and move on to something that will.  Instead, I say, “Sure, let’s try it.”  When it doesn’t work, I try to tweak the idea to find a way to make it work.  I give it up only when I’ve exhausted its possibilities.  And I always explain why it doesn’t work, so they understand why we can’t use it.

Occasionally, the tweaking is successful and results in a pretty good idea, which in and of itself is a good reason for trying even bad ideas.  Or it buys me enough time to think of a better one.  But even when it isn’t successful, the effort I’ve put toward it shows that I respect the actor who offered the idea and consider him a full partner in this venture.  That one act is often all it takes to get the entire cast to realize that I mean what I say, and that they should pipe up every time they have something they want to try.

I never want an actor to feel that she offered a “bad” idea.  There are ideas that work in the context of what we are trying to do and ideas that don’t (or don’t work as well as we want them to — whenever possible, I will characterize them in this way).  The only ideas I will characterize as “bad” are my own.

“Remember when I said you should do X?  I was wrong.  It doesn’t work at all.  Let’s find something else.”

“Eh — it doesn’t really work, but I have no idea what to do instead.  Let’s do that for now so we can keep moving, and we’ll find something better down the road.”

By admitting my own failures, I make it clear that I don’t have all the answers and that I’m open to suggestions.  And that it’s okay to not have the answers now, that answers will show up eventually.  When it is clear that I am exploring, the actors are more likely to explore.

 

On Auditioning

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AuditionI think I’ve written a small bit about auditioning before, but I’m not going back to read it to make sure I don’t repeat myself.  My perspective today may align in some ways — at least I hope it will — with what I have written before.  But I’m going to trust that what I write today is a whole in and of itself, even if it comes with duplicate phrases.

The one thing I think I must have said previously — or if not, I should have — is that Michael Shurtleff’s book “Audition” tells you everything you need to know.  Quite honestly, I think it tells you most everything you need to know about acting, not just auditioning.  Although if all you needed was the theory, higher education of all sorts would soon go out of business.

So I am vaguely contemplating auditioning for a local community theater production.  I’m not sure that I want to commit to everything doing a play means — rehearsals, performances, etc. — but I may just show up for auditions for the pleasure of saying the words I have longed to say since I first encountered the play in my adolescence, and let the future take care of itself.

Reading through the audition sides made me ask myself, what matters most in an audition?  What do I, as a director, look for?  And what do I, as an actor, try to provide?

Understand, there are as many kinds of directors as there are people.  I’m sure there are directors hoping that someone will show up who says the lines in precisely the way they sound in the director’s head.  And they may well cast on that basis.  I won’t say that an actor who does that won’t get my attention.  But it isn’t a given that I will cast that actor, either.

So what do I hope to see at an audition if I’m a director?

  • A moment — just a moment is sufficient — of a real emotional connection with the character.  A moment where all the artifice of the audition process disappears, and the actor is truly connected with what is going on with the character.  The more moments you can provide like this, the better.  But sometimes just a fleeting glimpse of it is sufficient for me to cast someone — for instance, if no one else has come close, or if you are so right in every other respect that the flash of understanding gives me the confidence that I can pull out of you what I need to.
  • An attempt to connect meaningfully with your scene partner.  I recognize that you don’t choose your scene partners at an audition, and your scene partner may have no idea that you are trying to connect with him.  He may be incapable of receiving what you send him, at least in the context of an audition, but I won’t grade you on that.  What matters to me is that I see you, as an actor, reach out to him, open yourself to whatever he may deliver.
  • If it’s a comedy, I’d love to get the sense that you know how to deliver a comic line.  I recently saw a musical comedy performed by a talented troupe of high school students, and was amazed by the fact that everyone with a funny line delivered it with great comic timing.  Very unusual, in my experience, and kudos to the woman running the program.  (Please give me the secret!)In a perfect world, you want a comedian/commedienne to deliver all the punchlines, but you won’t always get them.  Many times, the ingenue/juvenile or leading lady/man need to deliver punchlines, and you can do so successfully even if you aren’t a comedian by nature.  So at an audition, I want to see clear evidence that you know what “funny” means.

It’s nice if you’ve done you homework (if the play isn’t an original) and know something about the play and its characters.  If nothing else, it tells me that you are willing to work.  And while I don’t put a lot of weight on it, yes, reading the lines in a sensible way helps me to get past the rest and to see the first two things that I’m looking for, which are really two of the most important things you can convey in an audition.

The last thing you can bring to the table is sometimes taken care of by any of the things I’ve already mentioned.  It is also the most ephemeral thing to describe.

I’m looking for something unusual.  A creative take that isn’t expected.  A single moment of surprise, something that makes me joyful because whatever you do is so out of the ordinary and yet fits perfectly.  It can be the tiniest moment, but a moment that shows me that you can bring something unique to the play matters.  I want to see that you are a creative artist.  It doesn’t even matter if you make the wrong choice.  Just make an interesting choice.  I’m not going to assume that you have read the play before, or that even if you have, that you have digested it as thoroughly as you will over the course of rehearsals.  So I won’t penalize you for creative choices that aren’t right for the role.  On the contrary, just showing me that you can be creative is key.  I’ll assume that you will make creative choices in rehearsals that make better sense.  I just want to know that you have it in you to dig for the unusual.

Remember, I’ve got mere minutes with you in an audition.  To stand out, you need to do something — even just one thing — that no one else is doing nearly as well.  Stop worrying about doing it “right” and worry about doing it “interestingly”.

If you do all of these things but I don’t cast you, the reason is probably one of balance.  I’ve got to put together an entire cast that makes sense — physically, tonally, etc.  You may be brilliant, but you may also be the odd man out.  In that case, it may kill me to not cast you, but I’ve got no choice.

As an actor, assume it is killing me to not cast you.  Assuming that gives you the strength to keep going in this very difficult profession.

A Few Thoughts on Blocking

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You-Cant-Take-It-With-You-5281-701187I just got back from AACTFest 2015 and am reflecting on a couple of questions a director from Rochester asked me after the Blocking Workshop I gave on Friday:

  • Is it wrong to have an actor move when someone else is speaking?
  • What if you need an actor to move, but you have no good reason for him to move?

The questions arose, in part, in response to comments I had made about not moving when it is someone else’s “scene” and the need to have a reason to move, be it emotional or practical.  Let me address them in reverse order.

Anyone who has directed a play has encountered a moment when you realize that Actor A needs to be in Position B for one line and Position C for a line that follows, but you have no good way of getting him there.  You backtrack to see if there is another way to block the scene to eliminate the problem.  You try three different options, but none of them are satisfactory — either none of them solve the problem, or else you lose more than you gain.  There’s no real choice — Actor A has to move on another actor’s line when he has no real need to move.  What to do?

In a perfect world, you want to find a reason for him to move, because people just don’t move without a reason.  But the reason doesn’t have to be important or even material to the play.  Have you ever spotted a pin or a penny on the floor and picked it up?  Found something in your pocket you want to throw out and walked to the wastebasket to do just that?  No reason why you can’t have your actors do that.  Adds a bit of verisimilitude to the scene.  Done slowly enough and with minimal motion, it shouldn’t disrupt the scene, especially if the actor is carefully paying attention to what is being said at the time.  His focus on the speaker while he moves actually redirects the audience’s eyes back to the speaker.  Clearly, they think, the speaker must be saying something important!

But let’s say that there is no wastebasket and bending over would be just a little too distracting at that point in the play.  It’s not unheard of for someone to take a step or two for the simple reason that they are tired of standing in one spot.  Even without the excuse that the character wants to lean against the piece of furniture a few steps away, moving just to physically change position is fairly normal.  Is the speaker saying something that Actor A needs to consider?  Sometimes pacing helps people to think, and taking a few steps while pondering what the speaker is asking looks entirely believable to the audience.

Worst case, have the actor slowly sidle to the new location.  It’s unlikely the audience will notice it happening unless he is standing directly behind the speaker.

Which brings us back to the first concern:  is it a bad choice to have an actor move on anyone’s line but his own?

Well, there are times when it is entirely appropriate to do so.  Say there are five of us in the room plotting a bank robbery.  We’ve been going through a dry run, and the lady of the household arrives home with the groceries.  I’m the leader of the gang, and I start shouting out orders, telling everyone what to pick up and where to hide it, so she won’t know what we’re doing.  Everyone should be moving while I speak in that scenario.

But let’s say it’s a domestic scenario with a husband and wife.  Here’s my rule of thumb about virtually everything that happens on stage in a realistic play:  Does it happen in real life?  That is, in real life, do people walk when other people are talking?

Of course they do.  If it happens in real life, it can happen on stage.  Do it in a very real, natural way that does not distract from the important stuff in the play, and it will probably enhance the believability of the scene.

Having said that, there are times when you shouldn’t walk on someone else’s line.  I’m sure it’s not a comprehensive list, but here’s some examples:

  • Important plot points are being revealed.  For instance, in a murder mystery, you want to make sure the audience hears the red herrings.  Don’t do anything to interfere with that.  On the other hand, feel free to muffle the real clues just a little by some sort of sleight of hand — tossing it off as entirely unimportant or covering it with some sort of distracting physical action — not enough so the audience doesn’t hear it, but enough so they don’t think it matters.
  • Very dramatic or very funny moments.  Someone is telling you about their rape twenty years ago?  Don’t move a muscle.  There’s some funny shtick going on?  Keep still.  Someone is giving the punchline?  Hold your breath until two seconds after it’s finished.
  • When your action is big.  A simple short cross is often not a problem.  Nor are physical activities (business) that make sense for your character.  But anything too involved will draw the audience’s focus.  Make sure that whatever you’re doing is less interesting than what the speakers are doing and saying.  That way, if the audience looks at you, they think, “Oh, that’s believable” and not “Wow, that’s a lot more interesting than what the leads are doing!”

When should you walk on someone’s line?  Draggy scenes or extended exposition.  If these have stayed in the play to publication, it’s probably because no one — neither the playwright nor the original director — could figure out how to write the play without them.  Kind of like you with the actor stuck behind the chair when you need him over by the table!  Bail the playwright out by providing visual interest so the exposition won’t go down like bad-tasting medicine!

The Problem with Run-throughs

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digressionI need to digress and talk about run-throughs.  I’m writing this from the director’s perspective, but it’s useful for an actor to know, too.  I have much more to write in the Script Analysis series on Other People’s Money, but I feel a mighty powerful need to digress, too.

Run-throughs are rehearsals in which one “runs through” an entire act (or an entire play) with minimal, if any interruptions, and notes (corrections, suggestions, etc.) are given after the act is over.  There are a few real benefits to using run-throughs in rehearsal:

  • To “check in” on where the play stands.  If you’ve been doing a lot of piecemeal work, it helps you see how it is coming together.
  • To give the actors a sense of continuity.  Some actors find it difficult to work a play in pieces without regular run-throughs to remind them of how the play feels as a whole.
  • To give the actors the chance to really explore their emotional life.  Once you’ve cleared up the rough bits in the first half or even two-thirds of the rehearsal period, whether it’s physical stuff that needed fine-tuning or emotional motivations, actors can’t really explore their characters’ emotions fully if you jump into the middle of an act at the start of rehearsal.  And eventually, you need to be running the entire play in one night, because the second act builds on the first.

Maybe there are other benefits I’m not thinking of at the moment, and if so, I’ll be happy to add them as they spring to mind.  HOWEVER,

There are directors who seem to think that run-throughs, once blocking rehearsals are completed (“you move here on that line, then you sit, and then you stay there until she enters, at which point you rise and walk to the fireplace”), is the proper way to go.  In other words, a week or so into rehearsals, it’s time to move to a run-through of the act.

I understand where this philosophy comes from (at least some of the time):

  • That’s how the directors I worked under operated, so that must be how it’s done!
  • I can see how close the play comes to my vision, and so I can know better how to fix it.
  • How else would you direct a play?

If you’re working in community theater (or high school theater), this is, sadly, a not-uncommon approach to directing.  Why “sadly”?  Because it’s not particularly effective, even if you’re (otherwise) a good director.

On the one hand, I understand that a lot of people who end up directing in these venues have had no training as directors, and often no apprenticeship with anyone who is really good and creative as a director.  I’ve known directors who have never acted, and who have no real understanding of what an actor needs (whether he knows it or not, and not everyone does) to do his best work.  For those directors, run-throughs make perfect sense, because those directors are all about final product — beginning on the first day of rehearsal.

I am going to do something HIGHLY UNUSUAL for me, for those of you who have been reading this blog for any period of time, and confine myself to a SINGLE ARGUMENT, which is (for me) so powerful than any other arguments (which I could surely find) would be superfluous.  I recently came in touch with it in a powerful way, one of those wonderful “Aha!” moments that make life worth living for me.

The human brain is dualistic.  That is, we know a chair is a chair not only because it shares characteristics with another chair, but because it doesn’t share enough characteristics with a table.  We know what is “better” only when we compare it to like things that are “less good” or “okay, but who cares” or “atrocious”.

So if an actor is struggling with a scene, or simply in the early stages of “discovery” (which have nothing to do with final product — see all kinds of other posts throughout this blog) — letting him run that scene once a night — perhaps twice, in the context of the entire act, if he’s lucky — is insufficient.  Why?

Because if a scene or a beat or a moment or whatever isn’t working, you need to isolate it and work it repeatedly, so that the dualistic mind can do its work.  Forget what I’ve said about the subconscious — that will come into play here, too, but my emphasis on the subconscious does not mean that the conscious mind has nothing to contribute.  It does (but many actors rely too much on it, even if they think they don’t).  And here’s where the conscious mind is a real asset.

I’m speaking as an actor now:

Run a scene the first time, and you’ll get the “default” position — whatever your natural instincts brought you to.  Maybe not all of it works as well as you’d like.  Run it a second time (immediately), and you’re likely to change the things that bothered you the most.  The benefit is that you just did the scene in a different way, so you can compare the two (the brilliant dualistic mind at work) and say, “Huh.  I liked that part of version 2 better, but this other part was worse.  But I’m still not happy with what I did the first time.”

Notice that I haven’t gotten very specific about what did and didn’t work.  I don’t have to.  I may just be reacting on a gut level, but I feel that one or the other version succeeded in each moment, or that neither did.

Do it a third time, and I can start fine-tuning more.  I keep what worked from each of the first two versions and try to fix the remaining broken parts.

Or maybe I go completely off the rails and try something different the third time, most of which doesn’t work, but which offers me a clue about the exchanges that are troubling me.

I can take these learnings ONLY because they are back-to-back.  Spread them out over three rehearsals?  I’m sorry, I haven’t got that good a memory.  I can’t remember the nuances of how I played this scene two nights ago.  In the intervening 48 hours, my boss has yelled at me, my kid has had a fever of 103.1, the quote from the roofer came in and I almost fainted, and my best friend told me she’s having an affair with her dentist.

Seriously — you can’t expect me to remember what I was displeased with at the last rehearsal if it was more than an hour ago.

Now, I’m talking as a director (who happens to be an actor, but that’s sort of coincidental):

At some point, I’ll talk more about how I direct and what I think directors can learn from it, but for the moment, I’ll just say this:  I work my scenes to death, until every important piece has been dissected — not necessarily fixed, but dissected,  I make my actors massively uncomfortable by not following the usual formula of repeated run-throughs.  I’ve learned to throw enough run-throughs in to keep the actors calm, while still focusing my attention on the pieces.

Still, I know that my actors, if they haven’t worked with me before, feel some uncertainty at my approach.  But 3/4 of the way into rehearsals (if it takes that long! — depends on the demands of the play, which is a story for another post), the prospects for the play look brighter for the actors.  They still aren’t out of the woods, but they begin to think that maybe I haven’t led them entirely astray.  By the end of that week, they start to become believers, because there is this magical alchemy that happens — a product, I’m convinced, of my approach to directing.  By the time we get to Wednesday of opening week, they are ready.  I mean Really Ready.  I believe in having a show that is as good on opening night as it is on closing night, because both audiences are paying the same ticket price.  I ensure that by making sure my shows are ready by the Wednesday that precedes opening night (and by the way, this also includes giving the actors a night off on Tuesday of Tech Week).

I should also say that the final product we’ve arrived at on that Wednesday?  It’s not only better than what the actors anticipated, it is better than what I anticipated (and I always have loftier goals than my actors).

Most importantly, I have a cast that is chomping at the bit to open, and is supremely confident that they are doing superb work.  Hard to over-estimate the importance of that.

I’ve done this with a variety of casts and a host of different kinds of plays.  It has worked every time.

I grant you, there may be one important distinction between what I’ve done with my casts and what another director might do.  I have a very good sense of how to help actors deliver their best performances.  Not every director will share that.  But allowing actors to explore options in a scene early on in the rehearsal period — not once you realize that repeated run-throughs are not fixing the problem — is an easy trick that doesn’t require any special expertise as a director!

Please, PLEASE give me feedback on this post if I am off-base.  As an actor and a director, I don’t think I am — and I have recent experience to justify this belief — but I am ALWAYS on the lookout for new information that might improve my perspective.  So comment if you disagree!