Transcript Chapter 6 - Alvinisd.net

Chapter 6
THE DIRECTOR
Directing
 Directing is an art whose product is the most
ambiguous, perhaps the most mysterious, in the
theatre.
 The person who organizes the production.
 The director inspires creation of theatre with each
production.
A Historical Overview
 Playwrights from the time of Aeschylus have been
known to direct their own plays.
 The idea of an independent director did not exist
until the 19th century.
Teacher- Directors
 Didaskalos- the Greeks called teacher
 A teacher had already mastered his art and they then
were required to teach.
 Reached its pinnacle in the late Enlightenment and
Victorian eras.
Directors of Realism
 Began during the end of the 19th century
 Wanted to make their plays more lifelike than those
of past eras.
 Duke of Saxe-Meiningen was the first “modern”
director.



Dazzled the German public with carefully harmonized acting,
staging and scenery.
Historically correct designs
Created a true acting ensemble.
Directors of Realism
 Andre Antoine- Paris- Theatre Libre
 Stanislavsky- Moscow Art Theater
 They both developed innovative staging techniques
in acting and actor coaching based on the duke’s
staging.
 Sought to make the theatre a powerful social and
artistic instrument for the expression of truth.
 Directors become part analyst, part therapist, and
even part mystic.
Directors of Antirealism
 Aimed primarily at the creation of originality,
theatricality and style, and be unrestrained by rigid
formulas with respect to realistic theater.
 The goal was to create sheer theatrical brilliance,
beauty and excitement.
 Paul Fort- Theatre d’Art in Paris
 Vsevolod Meyerhold- biomechanical constructivisman acting method characterized by bold gestures and
rapid, near acrobatic movement
The Directing Process
 The director may spend a year or more preparing
and staging a production and then more years
restaging it in different theaters.
 Preparation period
 Implementation period
Preparation Period
 The play is selected
 The text may be translated or adapted
 A producer is found
 the director begins to conceptualize the play’s
production.
Preparation Period
 A director guides the production
 Dramaturgically- the story we want to tell
 Intellectually- why we want to tell it
 Aesthetically- how we want it to look, sound and feel
 A director assembles a team of designers, technicians
and actors.
Producer
 Finances the production
 Producers can be invited to help stage a play
 Producers can hire the director
 Can be part of a producing entity (groups,
corporations or partnerships)
Producers in Academia
 Primary goal is to safeguard the ling term interests of
the institution that hosts the production
Producer
 Hire (and fire) the director
 Provides financial resources
 Creating and managing the budget
 Choosing and acquiring the theater facility
 Establish the play’s rehearsal and performance dates
 Handle legal and business aspects of the production.
Choosing the Play
 This may come from the director or producer
 Considerations:
 Eagerness to mount the production
 Confidence that it can be successfully cast, conceptualized,
budgeted and staged
 Belief that the production will engender genuine enthusiasm
among the artistic team, cast and audience.
Adapting the Play
 The most common adaptation is “cutting” or deleting
lines to compress the play’s action and limit its
duration.
 American copyright law currently covers an author’s
work until 70 years after his or her death
Adapting the Play
 Adaptation may change the fundamental aspects of a
play’s dramaturgy (history, context or theme)
 Adapted productions are meant to be controversial
Core Concept
 The director’s determination of the most important
of the many images, ideas, and emotions that should
emerge from the play.
 A director that tried to give equal weight to all of a
play’s themes would create a “mess”- a production
that is unfocused and “all over the place.”
Core Concept
 The highest priority image, idea, style or emotion
becomes the play’s core organizing principal
 It is what the play is “about” or what it “means”
 It ensures that the play signifies something.
High Concept
 Introducing highly unexpected insights into
character, story or style
 May mean nothing more than moving a play out of
the period in which it is set and placing it in another.
 Modern audiences have come to expect high
concepts
High Concept
 Aim for unique and revelatory rethinking of major
works
 Transcending their plays’ original conventions and
presenting profound, moving, new and uniquely
illuminating theatricalizations that make telling
references to current issues.
High Concept
 Must work for the entire play
 Heavy duty research and comprehensive thinking
through the entire script
Dramaturg
 Literary advisor or research assistant or both
 A specialist in dramatic analysis who serves as a
bridge between the director and the playwright
 Help the director with research, conceptualizing, and
understanding the play’s structure, meanings and
historical context.
Implementation Period
 Selecting the designers.
 Casting the actors.
Casting the Actors
 “casting is 90% of directing”
 Casting directors
 Auditions
 Callbacks
Rehearsals
 The play will be read aloud, memorized, staged, and
rehearsed- often in rooms with makeshift “rehearsal
furniture” and the walls taped on the floor.
 Director should maintain both leadership and
creative inspiration.
Staging
 Goals of staging
 Create focus
 Lend credibility to the characters
 Generate interest
 Impart an aesthetic
 Provoke suspense
 Stimulate a fulfilling theatricality
Blocking
 The timing and placement of a character’s entrances,




exits, rises, crosses, embraces and other major
movement
This is the framework of all staging
Pre-Blocking- preplanning the movements on paper
Some blocking may be specialized and then a
director may wish to bring in a choreographer or
other specialist.
Business- small scale movements that a character
performs within the larger pattern of blocking.
Actor Coaching
 The director is the actor’s coach and leads the
various activities- discussions, improvisations,
games, exercises, lectures, research, blocking,
polishing
 Must provide an atmosphere where the actor can feel
free to liberate their powers of sensitivity and
creativity.
 Good directors lead their casts; great directors
inspire them.
Pacing
 “well paced” “well directed”
 “slow” or “dragging”
 It is not just the rate at which the lines are said
 Created on the basis of a complex and composite
time structure that incorporates many variables:
credibility, suspense, mood, style and the natural
rhythms of life such as heartbeat, respiration, sob,
laugh
Pacing
 Faster tempos tend to excite, bedazzle and sharpen
audience attention
 Slower tempos allow the audience to consider and to
augment the play’s actions and ideas with their own
reflections.
Coordinating
 In the final rehearsals the director’s responsibility
become more of one of bringing together the concept
and design, the acting and the staging, the pace and
the performance.
 May have to modify or eliminate those parts of the
production that aren’t communicating to the
audience effectively.
 Technical rehearsals
 Dress rehearsals
Presenting
 No one is more useless on opening night than the
director.
Director Training
 Most directors have brought to their art a
comprehensive knowledge of the theatre in its
various aspects.
 Entering the profession today are directors who have
been trained in a dramatic graduate program or
conservatory and often have supplemental training
with an apprenticeship at a theater.