I run theatre workshops for primary school groups, exploring arts and creativity. At the beginning I’ll introduce myself as a theatre director, and ask the young people what they think that might mean. Some regulars: “you tell people what to do”, “you tell actors where to stand”, and on one occasion, “you shout at people”. Oh dear.
At the beginning of that same workshop, I once said I was a performance artist, for reasons unknown to me (I had momentarily lost my thread). The participants came back with some interesting suggestions, but, as I was really none the wiser, I mainly nodded and made appropriate supportive noises. Lesson #1 kids- we’re all making it up as we go along.
To the point: what is the role of the director in the creation of theatre? I recently took part in a Meisner short-course led by Jack Price (it’s brilliant, and if you’re interested in this kind of thing, I recommend it. Here’s a link). Jack described the role of director as that of ‘highly attuned audience member’ which I thought was interesting; we are (hopefully) always thinking about the audience as we create our work- the role they have in the world of the play, the story we’re telling them, why we’re telling it to them, what effect we want it to have on them, how we want it to hit them (or stroke them, or hug them, or tickle them etc etc), when we want them to work harder, how we bring them in. There’s also an underlying provocation here that to create theatre we need an actor, or a few of them, and an audience, of some kind. A director and an audience does not theatre make.
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So we have two directions of thought here- the director as the dictator and the director as the observer. I’ve been mulling over it, and, ever a fan of a grey area, I’m heading towards something more nuanced; the role of the director as increasing the bandwidth. That is, the role of the director is to take a play that they connect to, mine it for all it’s worth, ask all the questions, and spend the rehearsal period, with actors, exploring. That does not mean fixing answers. That’s an end-point. And theatre, by-god, is not about end points. That’s what makes theatre so special- every time we see it, it is always unique- its very liveness means that time was the only time you’ll ever experience it that way, and that time, and that one; it lives from moment, to moment, none of which can be replicated. So, whilst creating characters, building relationships between them, getting inside of what they say and why, getting inside the rhythm of a play, from where I’m stood, the role of the director is to make everything s-t-r-e-t-c-h.
Let me be specific, because I realise I’m treading the line of incoherent metaphor here. I’m currently directing ‘All of Me’ at VAULT Festival, written by the magnificent Martin Brett and performed by the ever playful, ever authentic Jack Wilkinson. Jack plays Gareth- lonely, isolated, bitter and angry (Gareth, not Jack). So we started the rehearsal process by asking tons of questions about Gareth, and then using Laban techniques to explore all the potential ways in which a body might move- moving lightly, or with great strength is just one example (I wrote a post exploring this in more detail here). The point of this work is, rather than drawing from our natural inclination to move in a certain way (very personal, and we’ve each of us been doing it our way for a lifetime, so also very challenging to change)- we are retraining the muscles to be open to anything. We used Meisner technique in the same way, to flex the impulse muscle, to get out of our heads, and wire the text into our impulses- so it comes from our bodies rather than our brains.
So rather than take a sledge hammer to a text and insist that it is this way and that way, and you move here and speak that there like this, I think our job is to stretch it. To take it to its limits, play at all ends of it, and then, with the actor (never for them), decide where you’re headed. And that does not mean, we’ve explored everything and now we’re doing it like this- it means, we’ve had a really good look around, and we’ve found this, and this and this interesting- let’s keep on playing.
Terrifying for actors and directors alike, because we’re really not making final decisions about much, but also the most fun I’ve had. I’ve just come out of a tech this morning (in which we plot the lighting and check the sound cues behave themselves) where we basically decided we’d light the whole of the stage, most of the time, because we’ve no idea where Jack will move to at which point. Save the words in the script, we’ve very little idea what he’ll be doing each night at all. It depends on where the playing, and the audience, and the magical breath created between the two goes. And that my friend, is not a thing that we can (or should wish to) dictate.
While I’m here- I don’t know how many times I’ve used the word ‘polish’ as part of a rehearsal process- it’s stuck somewhere in the glue of my brain, I suspect from tap dance classes as a child (I wish I was joking), but never, never again. (Or at least, if I do, please shake your head furiously and scream something alarming but not abusive in my direction as a reminder). For there is no place for tidy or polished in theatre- that tidying is where we kill it dead, because if we’re presenting real life, in all its dimensions and possibilities, we must do it in a way that is vulnerable, unpredictable, smelly, sweaty and most importantly of all, authentic.
All of Me is on at VAULT Festival from 1-5 March @ 6:30pm (matinees 4 & 5 @ 3:15pm).
For tickets see http://www.vaultfestival.com/event/all-of-me/2017-03-01/
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