Lecture 16 - The Director

Today, I'm talking about the director - a personage and a title that most of you have seen at some point or another. If you go to the theater, you'll find it somewhere near the bottom of the page where all the credits appear. It usually says "directed by" or "director" in fairly large print. If you're watching a film at the movies, the last credit you'll see, if the credits are at the beginning of the movie, will be "directed by" in that special spot. In the film world these days, the director is such a powerful and frequently honored individual that after the logo of the distributing company, the first thing you see before the film even begins is a frame that says "A Steven Spielberg film" - an indication of the particular position that the director holds in the film world. The same goes for television. When you're watching a TV show, the last credit given at the beginning tells you who the stars, special guests, producers, and writers are, and then finally, the director. So today, we're talking about who this person, the director, is. I'll also say that while the functions of the director may change somewhat from medium to medium - from theater to film to television - and the power structure may shift a little bit, almost everything I'll be discussing today applies to theater, film, or television. The director is actually a rather recent addition to the scene. The director has only existed as a separate individual in theatrical terms for a little over a hundred years. When one thinks about it, the actor has been around far longer. The Greek actor Thespis, for example, stepped out of the Greek chorus in 534 BC and became the world's first actor. Or, if we think about it a hundred years later, during the height of Greek theater in the 400s BC, playwrights, actors, and choruses existed, but there was no mention of a director. Even when Shakespeare wrote for the English theater between the early 1590s and early 1600s, there was no mention of a director. Playwrights and acting companies existed, but not directors. It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that the director as we now recognize emerged. The credit is usually given to the Duke of Sax Meinecke, who ruled a small German principality. The duke and his wife, a former actress, were heavily interested in theater. Within his court, the duke assembled a group of players to rehearse the plays he chose, with the help of a close friend who acted as the stage manager and his wife, who acted as an assistant. The Duke began to put on productions. He himself was mostly a visual artist and, uh, he had been much interested in design. So, he designed sets and costumes. But then, eventually, his interest broadened out to the whole theatrical, uh, idea. So, eventually, what began to happen with the productions that took place in his theater was every detail passed through his hands. He made a decision about everything. So, consequently, he decided what scripts were to be done. He decided how the scripts were to be played. He designed the sets. He designed the costumes, uh, through his wife. He rehearsed with, or I should maybe say, with his wife. He rehearsed the actors. And at some point, he would decide that a production was ready for the public to see. And so, at that point, then the public would be invited into the court theater. And there, they would see a production which was really almost totally conceived within the mind of the Duke of Saxomanigan. Starting in 1874 and from 1874 until 1890, the Saxomanigan troupe left their small principality and went first to Berlin. In fact, their first play date ever is May 1, 1874, in Berlin. From that point, then, for the next 16 years, they toured all of the major cities of continental Europe, including major Russian cities, and eventually even crossed the channel and appeared in London. Wherever the troop of actors appeared, those performances astounded the audience and, most of all, astounded the theater people of those cities, the theater artists of those cities. They had never seen productions that looked the way those productions looked. Those productions in which there was an emphasis on the totality of the pieces, on all of the various theatrical elements: scenery, costume, acting, and script coming together and being artistically united in some way. Every element fitting together, every element supporting each other. We, well, we know that the famous actor, English actor of the period, Sir Henry Irving, who was also the manager of his own theatrical company and one of the primary actors of his day. In fact, Henry Irving was the first English actor to be knighted, the first actor who was called Sir. So, thus Sir Henry Irving, uh, was astounded at what he saw. And we know that he changed within his own theater thereafter some of his own theatrical practices in which he began to emulate those practices that he had seen the company of Saxomanigan do. We know that when the company appeared in Moscow, Constantine Stanislavski, who was one of the famous actors of the day, uh, was astounded by what he saw. And it was indeed that seeing that company of Saxomanigan that then led Stanislavski, uh, in a few years to form his own company, which became one of the most famous theatrical companies in the world called the Moscow Art Theater. So, the influence of Saxomanigan was felt throughout Europe, was felt throughout England, and of course, then, uh, also very much in the American theater. And what we begin to find then is that the director begins to emerge and certify, and by the beginning of the 20th century, it is very much this person, he or she, and in the early years, it's almost always he, uh, only really in the last 50 years or so has, uh, the woman entered as a major director. So, in these early days of the 20th century, he, the director, attempted to create productions that they had learned, for which ideas they had learned, that is, the artistic ideas they had learned from what they had seen from the Duke of Saxomanigan and, of course, then from many of the other European directors who also began to try to emulate and to create acting companies where the emphasis would be on the total experience in some way or another. So, let's look then at, we've talked about that this person is really quite new, uh, on the scene, uh, let's look and talk about then what are the functions, the actions, the decisions, artistic decisions, uh, that the director is going to make in some way or other. And a good place to begin is that the director then makes a very specific decision on selecting or committing to the script. Now, that may sound strange, but what we're talking about here is that anyone who begins directing (and this is especially true if we're talking in terms of the theater or film, it's not quite so true in television because they work television works on a much faster schedule), but in terms of the theater and the film, the director is committing weeks and weeks and months of his, his time, his talent, his abilities to the bringing to some fruition this script, which he or she may be working on, to that final product which the audience is going to see. So therefore, a director, it's quite a commitment for a director to try to decide that yes, I am interested in this script, yes, I want to bring all of my talents, all of my skills, I want to bring them to bear, and I am interested in doing this particular script. In most cases, a director will make a decision based on the fact that somehow or other, that he or she believes that I have something to bring to this script, I have something here which says I can do something, I can create something here that will attract an audience. I can do this work in such a way that I know that audiences will receive pleasure, enjoyment, whatever other particular benefit that one may have here. So, a director is going then to commit him or herself to a project. In some cases, the director may well find that the particular project has certain strings with it. And that is in the case of maybe a particular actor has already been hired. In fact, maybe this production is even being put together in some way or other because a certain actor/performer is interested in doing it. In the early 1990s, Kathleen Turner was interested in performing the role of Maggie in Tennessee Williams' play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She talked to some New York producers, and they thought that was a very viable proposition for them. Viable in terms of it is something that could be marketed, it is something could be sold, it is something they felt they could get investors for. And so therefore, they then began to assemble this project. So, in this particular case, then the producers already had in hand the script which was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. They have the star for this particular production, Kathleen Turner. And now they go out and they need to find a director. In this particular case, they found Howard Davies, an English director. They were interested in him one because Davies had already done a successful production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in London a few years earlier than this, a much-acclaimed production. So, they asked him if he would be interested. And now, in this case, yes, he was. But Davies, in coming to this production, was certainly already aware this is not going to be that I'm just remounting again the production I have done in London because already, this production has certain stipulations within it. And that is, in this case, your leading lady is going to be Kathleen Turner. So consequently, coming into this project as a director, he already knows that there are certain factors that he has to consider. And finding that, however, of great interest, he commits himself to the project, to taking the script with this particular star and now going to work on it and moving it from the page to the stage, which is one way of putting it. So, at this point, the actor has the director has now selected the script, committed himself to the project. Now, the next thing that any director is going to do is reading and reading and reading and reading and reading the script. Now, this process of reading is not necessarily what you may think of just as picking up a play and reading it over and over again, although that is certainly part of it. This is where then during the part of this reading that a director begins to use that which is his talent, that. which is his artistic creativity that embodies the skills that he has learned and that is how to read a script in such a way that those words on a page are no longer just words, they begin to translate into moving images and the characters start talking. In the mind of the director, they hear the characters speaking and see them moving around. This is where the director's creativity and artistic skill lies - the ability to pick up a script and see the possibilities of what will happen once it's on stage. Let's use Shakespeare's Hamlet as an example. In the opening scene, we see a character named Bernardo with the opening line "Who's there?" Francisco responds with "Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself." Bernardo says, "Long live the king," and Francisco replies, "Bernardo?" Bernardo responds, "He! Francisco!" Francisco tells Bernardo to get to bed as it's now struck 12. Even with just these few lines, a director starts to see and hear things. Shakespeare doesn't provide many stage directions, but we know the scene takes place at Elsinore, a castle in Denmark, likely on one of the tower walls or somewhere they might be guarding. We have two characters, Bernardo and Francisco. We also know that when the scene starts, Francisco is by himself. It's the middle of the night, very dark, and he hears a noise, prompting him to ask, "Who's there?" He doesn't get a reply, so he insists, "Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself." For a director, these lines already spark visualization. Francisco is there alone, on guard duty, in the dark. He hears a noise and realizes Bernardo is coming to relieve him, but because it's so dark, he can't see him. They have to reveal themselves to each other and figure out what's going on. This is where a director begins, reading the script and analyzing it. They visualize, hear, and find rhythms in the dialogue. They consider the structure of the story and identify moments of heightened tension. They explore how to get there. Reading the script becomes an ongoing process for the director, even while working on it. Through all the rehearsals, and I suppose it finally stops when the show opens. The play opens, the performance begins, and at that point, the director finally finishes reading. But the director constantly reads and reads and reads. Now, among other things, the help that the director may need in reading and understanding the script leads to his or her researching period. The researching that is going to take place here, if this particular play takes place in some time and every play takes place in some era or the other. At this point, the director is beginning to want to know something about the period, the time in which it is laid, the place in which it is set. Who makes up the characters of this play? What society are they from? In some way or the other, the musical Greece takes place in the United States high school, 1950s. Well, at this point then, the director has begun, has got to begin to need to know something about, hey, what was it like in the 1950s to be a teenager? Certainly, if you have a costume designer, you know that the costume designer is going to begin to know something about what they wore during that period. But the director also needs to know something about what they wore, what they look like, how did they act? What were the slangs, what was the slang of the period? What were the actions that the teenagers do? The actions of the teenagers of the 1950s are not going to be the same as the body signals of the 1990s or the 21st century. They look different. They acted differently. And so, therefore, now the director needs to begin to find out. This needs to be, this needs to go through the research in some way, the other to find these things. Just to decide to do Greece is not enough. Now one has got to go back and find out what one can about the era in which Greece happens. Maybe the director needs to know something about the author. I mentioned earlier the production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by the playwright Tennessee Williams. Well, Tennessee Williams was a major playwright of the second half of the 20th century in the United States. He wrote a number of major plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Night of the Iguana, and a number of other plays after that. So, therefore, maybe the director finds it very necessary to familiarize himself with the other plays that the playwright wrote. Maybe he needs to know something about the biography of Tennessee Williams. Where was Tennessee Williams born? One needs to know things about Tennessee Williams' life in some way or the other. And then perhaps, maybe it will be helpful in the research to know something about the production history. And that is how, and what kind of productions have been done of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Or what other artistic decisions did some other director make in terms of Maggie Brick and Big Daddy, who are the three major characters in this particular play. What kind of decisions did actors make about those particular characters? Now, none of this necessarily means that the director is going to make the same decisions that they did, but it is always helpful if a director can know something about what other people have already done. How well did it work? How well did it not work? How successful were they? And then, at that point, now the director will try to make some decisions about what it is that he or she may want to do. This brings us to then what is the fourth point, and that is at this point, the director now will be constructing a vision for the production. Never ever are any two productions in the theater going to be alike. They are going to be different, one because they're going to be usually two different sets of actors in them. A different director may have directed this production, and even when this director has directed the same play twice, as in the case of Howard Davies prior to this production that was done in New York and on Broadway of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Kathleen Turner-Davies would unquestionably know that now these new actors are going to be different from the ones he worked with before. So, therefore, and also, this is going to be a different time, a different place, a different set of actors. So, therefore, there is a different audience because Howard Davies knows that the audience in London is different from the audience in New York, as well as the audience in Springfield, Missouri. When one begins to conceive a production, one takes into consideration who this production is for and who will be seeing it. The contemporary American director, Anne Bogart, has said that when she begins working on a particular production, what she does is touch the question with her own sensibilities. She believes that inside every good play lives a question, and a great play asks big questions that endure through time. We remember these questions in our bodies, and the perceptions take place in real-time and space. The question haunts her in daily life, and everything she experiences is related to that question. In rehearsal, the question spreads to others, and ultimately to the audience. The act of memory is a physical act and lies at the heart of the art of the theatre. Peter Brook, perhaps the most influential director in the second half of the 20th century, puts it more simply. He believes that a director must conjure the sound from a play in order for it to be heard. The director constructs the vision for the production. Up to this point, we have only discussed the director, but the theatre is a collaborative work. Now the director begins selecting and assembling the artistic team. In the commercial theatre, it is often the producers who have already assembled the team of designers. Uh, and uh, they consult with the director. But whatever it is, in one way or another, the director is now going to enter into this collaboration by bringing together, by assembling, uh, this team- this collaborative team who are going to be his artistic collaborators, his artistic mates, and creating this particular production. So, at this point, now the director begins giving away all of these things that he or she has already been working on. That is all of these ideas that previously the director has learned about. Now the director begins taking them and passing them on to the artistic team. At the same time, the other members of the artistic team will also have already had the script. They will have already begun doing their work. They will have read and re-read and re-read and they will have begun to think of the script from whatever their particular angle or function may be. The costume designer will begin thinking in terms of what do the characters wear? The scenery designer will begin thinking in terms of what is the visual look of the world that this particular production is going to inhabit. And this team now begins to exchange ideas. This team begins to feed off each other. Each begins to stimulate the other. And in some cases, and frequently, the director will find that that vision that he or she may have constructed earlier, that it now begins to change as other ideas begin to enter in. All of this is a very fluid kind of process that happens here. It is seldom rigid. It is a point in which everything remains fluid, so that as new ideas enter in, as new people enter in, there is always room for more consideration here in some way or the other. So now, the artistic team is assembled, and now the director enters into what many people consider to be perhaps the most important step the director takes. Uh, in fact, one director has even estimated that once one has cast the production, 80 percent of the work of the director is done. That's probably an exaggeration in many ways, but it certainly begins to indicate the immense importance that must happen here when the director selects the cast. Now, as we've already indicated when we used the incident earlier in this, in one particular case, in the case of a cat on a hot tin roof, the director did not select the actor who was going to play Maggie. That was already a given. Kathleen Turner was going to do that. But now, all of the other actors- Brick, Big Daddy, Big Mama, Gooper, may all of these characters, these now are to be assembled, and these actors have to be chosen. And at this point, what the director does is, the director begins all of these ideas that he has had, all of what he has heard previously, what a character sounds like, what a character looks like. And at this point, now the director begins trying to match what is it that a particular actor brings to a role, that how well does it match what the particular director had in mind. So, at this point then, the director begins the process of weeding. And it is a very difficult process. It is a process which can be a very unhappy one for the actors. And that is, it can be one filled with great tension. And directors, uh, any director who is consciously aware of actors and what they're going through, will try to be as kind as possible to an actor who has come in for an audition. Will try to put that particular actor at ease. Because obviously, the better that the actor, the better audition that the actor can give, then the more the director will have the chance to see what are the abilities of this particular actor in some way or the other. But through this process, then, in which one will begin eliminating, one will begin simply, this person doesn't work, this person is not, uh, does not fit what I see or hear. And one simply goes through and finally you bring your various choices together and you look at them. Because you now have to look at them not in isolation. And that is, yes, maybe this is a perfect, uh, person for what you thought. Would play who could play Big Daddy, but somehow or the other, once you see that person with Maggie, with Brick, with Big Mama, you go, "Oh, wait a minute, this..." Somehow, the other person doesn't work into the totality of the ensemble that I want to create. At that point, the director has to go back and say, "Wait a minute, okay, there's another person here. Let's try that person into the totality here." Finally, we arrive at the point where the final collaborators on the project are brought together. The actors are now assembled. So, at this point, we have assembled the totality of the artistic team, including all of the designers who are going to work on the production, the producers who may be there, and the actors who are going to present and do this particular work. The director begins to think in terms of making a rehearsal schedule. There is always a time limit. Seldom does one have, in fact almost never does one have, the luxury of just going, "Well, we'll rehearse this until we're ready for it to open." That was the process of the Duke of Saxome, but that's a luxury that certainly in no theater in the present day do we have. We know an audience is going to be sitting out there in those seats. So, at this point, you have to have something ready to show them. Not just something, but something that looks finished. Now, that can vary. There is a particular organization in St. Louis which produces musicals. Essentially, those are produced in two and a half weeks in the Broadway theater. Usually, for a non-musical play, rehearsals are three weeks. At the end of the third week, you know there's going to be an audience out there. Musicals usually have four weeks of rehearsal, and at the end of that four-week period, there's going to be an audience out there. You have to be ready to show them something. So, at this point, the director has to take all of his or her organizational skills and bring them to bear on how to organize the rehearsal to get the greatest use possible out of the individuals and the time that we have. If it's a musical, and you have a choreographer who is going to work on dances, and a musical director who needs to work with the cast in terms of their singing, and a chorus if they're doing production numbers, you have to work all of this out. The director is overseeing it all, working on the acting scenes, and helping the actors arrive at their characterizations. Organizing and making a rehearsal schedule is frequently different in theater compared to film or television. Film has almost no rehearsal time, and television has no rehearsal time at all. In film, the actors are brought on set, told where to move, and then they read or act the script with each other. Rehearsal is a luxury of the theater. Television has a little more rehearsal time but not much, and it's not much different from film. Good directors know they must organize themselves in some way. In the theater, the director conducts the rehearsals. There may be several places where rehearsals are happening, with one room for the director working with actors on their characters and blocking, and another room for the choreographer working with the chorus on production numbers. Maybe the musical director will have some actors who are not working in the particular scene with the director and the musical director will be off working with those actors on their particular songs or whatever. Here, but whatever it is, the rehearsal period is now the period in which the director is giving over. The director is now giving over everything that he or she did in that pre-production period. That work, that was frequently weeks or months of work that the director did and learned about, and thinking about the script and what the script says. Thinking about what is, in Bogart's term, what are the questions that are raised here or the question. And as you notice here, she indicated that the question permeates everything here. It permeates to the designers, it permeates to the actors, and eventually, if the questions have been raised and constructed in such a way, then when everyone finishes, they will then permeate to the audience. But this is what then the director is doing. The director is giving away. The director is collaborating with everyone else who is now working on the production. And the director, and every director should always be highly sensitive to all of the other individuals who are working on that production. The director is attempting to get every individual here to work to his or her capacity to reach the fullest potential that that particular individual has within his or her talent and abilities. So every director is always working with the other people looking for clues if the director has not worked with the individuals before. What is it that I can do to key into this particular individual? How can I get this individual to contribute the most to what it is that we are doing here? Now certainly doesn't mean that the other individuals aren't doing the same thing because, in fact, everybody else is also tuning into the director. How does this director work? How does this director begin to help me? How does this director tell me what is going on? Now every director is going to do to conduct rehearsals differently. No director works the same, every director has his or her own particular method, and most directors are probably even going to end up working differently from one production to another. If the particular production is a musical, then at that point, the director may work one way because already you know that there are so many other people who also have to work here in terms of the choreographer in terms of the musical director in various terms of what these people need. But it may be quite different from a non-musical. Where when you come into the rehearsal space, there isn't the musical director to worry about, there isn't the choreographer to worry about. Instead, in the rehearsal space, there will be the director, the assistants who are working with the director in one way or the other, and the actors. And so consequently, then the director may rehearse the show one way one time or maybe depending entirely on what kind of play it is. Is it a comedy? Then maybe the director will want to go one way. Is it perhaps a more abstract end of the 20th-century piece of some kind or another? Then in that particular case, maybe the director will want to have a whole different process and way of working with the actors. In that case, that's going to be different from a way that you might work with the actors otherwise. But what you are doing here then, the director is guiding, shaping, constructing the performance that the director wants the audience to see. So in order to do this, the director, of course, is going to have to give way. The director is going to impart then this to the other people who are working. At the same time that the director is working with the actors, what the director is also checking with the other members of the artistic team. How is the costume designer coming along? At some point along the way, there would have been meetings that took place with the various visual artistic members of the team. The director would have seen what the set designer had in mind. The director would have seen the costumes that the costume designer had in mind. The lighting designer would have begun to tell the director something about the way that the lights may go, so the director stays in constant communication and constant checking with the team to see how their particular work is coming along. Are they discovering problems that perhaps had not been thought of earlier? And obviously, at this point, if there are problems, they need to be settled, they need to be talked through in some way or the other. We finally arrive at a point where all of these things begin to come together. They are still all isolated. Each one is off. The costume designer is in the costume shop. The scenic designer is in the scene shop. The lighting designer is trying to think in terms of when may I get into the theater because I've got to hang those lights and I've got to get those lights set up in such a way as to convey what it is that I want with the lights. The sound designer is in the sound studio, thinking in terms of what kinds of sounds are going to be needed for this particular production. Now, all of those things are going on, and we arrive at a point in the rehearsal where the director, working with the actors, then begins to do what we call run-throughs. And by run-throughs, we mean that the director begins at the beginning of the script, at the beginning of whatever it is, and we go straight through it. Now, we may stop, we may work on it in some way or the other, but there eventually arrives a point at which we go, "Let's just go through the play. Let's don't stop. Let's begin at the beginning and go straight. Let's see how... Let's see what we've done. Let's see how everything works together," that is, in terms of what the actors and the director have done. And at that point, the director moves sort of away. Up until now, the director has been a very active collaborator with the actors in some way or the other. He has worked with them to help them find their way through the script. At this point, however, the director now steps out of that process and becomes much more objective. The British director Tyrone Guthrie called it becoming an audience of one. And that is now the director, the actors must begin to learn how to bounce off an audience. That's what a production has been created for. They've been working up here in this rehearsal space. Now, they've got to thinking terms of projecting this to an audience. There's no audience present, so the director becomes the audience of one. The director backs out of the production. The director begins looking at and watches objectively and says, "Is this what the audience is going to see? I don't understand this. Isn't clear." And so, then you go back into, once you finish the run-through, you go back to the actors, and you work with them. You say, "We need to clarify this point in some way or the other." And then finally, we come to that point where all of the pieces are going to come together. We move into the theatre. We move into the space where this play is going to be performed. And now, we go that the director must organize the technical and dress rehearsals. All the pieces now must come together. The costume designer brings the costumes from the costume shop. The set is on stage. The lighting designer begins to show the lights. The sound is all there. And we go, and we have what is the first technical rehearsal. William Ball has stated this in his William Ball was a director of the second half of the 20th century and most influential individual and wrote a wonderful book called "A Sense of Direction." He says, "It took me 15 years to learn something. The first technical rehearsal is always a disaster. It is always a complete and utter disaster. All the achievements and hopes built up in the rehearsal process collapse in an unrecognizable heap. The pieces don't fit together. Nothing is finished. Cues are missed, lines are scrambled, entrances are forgotten, the actors are befuddled, the props are late, the costumes look strange, the designers are disappointed, the crew is angry, the stage manager is dazed, and the director feels lost, irretrievably lost. Yes, everything seems to fall apart, but it is not the director's fault. So don't give way to depression, and it's no one else's fault either, so don't give way to anger. It happens, it's a custom, the first technical rehearsal." We then go on into the other technical rehearsals, and things begin to straighten out. Then, we come to the dress rehearsal. That is where everything is now done, just as if the audience were there. But the audience isn't there. But it is then where everything goes. We go from beginning to end, no stops. Let's go, let's see it happen. And so, at that point, the director begins to find whether all of this work is fitting together. And he can only hope that it is a success. If the director has done his work well, then at that first performance where an audience is present, then at that point, the director has disappeared into the production. The audience doesn't know what the director has done. The audience can see the actors up there, know what those actors are doing. The audience can see what the set designer has done. This now comes to an end. The director has disappeared. And if it is a success for the production, the director has a successful production.