Chapter+5

Peter Brook is known for spending weeks of rehearsals with improvisations. One of the best-known theatrical stories concerns his production of Seneca’s Oedipus at the National Theatre. This was in 1968 during the height of the “Theatre of Cruelty” trend and Brook had made the distinguished cast go through many days of primal screaming, imitating various animals–everything except work on the text. One day he asked the actors to prepare a short improvisation based on the most terrifying experience they could possible imagine. When it came to Sir John Gielgud’s turn, he did nothing. The great actor stood there with his faraway, melancholy gaze until Brook asked whether there was nothing terrifying that he could think of. “Actually, Peter, there is,” replied Sir John quietly: “we open in two weeks.” //Theatrical Anecdotes// by Peter Hay. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 242. __CHAPTER V__ __Directing__ Actors interpret a play within the context of a performance space before an audience. These we know are the four fundamental ingredients of a live performance event. But you well might ask, “Who organizes and ultimately leads this effort?” “Who translates and provides the environmental context of the world in which the characters reside?” “And who underwrites, manages, and supports a performance?” Good questions all. The theatre relies on a great many more people besides the actors and playwright to bring off a production, all specialists, whose work virtually goes unnoticed by the general public.

In today’s theatre, the ultimate authority for a production is placed in the hands of a specialist -- the director.

__Duties and Responsibilities of the Director__ Directing carries with it a great deal of power and authority. Much of the success or failure of a productions rests in the hands of directors. Someone has to make the final decisions about a host of matter, many of the of major consequence and many of them trivial.

The audience sees the work of the director always but it does not know how to separate it from the work of the performers, nor does it know in what way directors impact the work of designers.

Imagine for a moment that you were attending a concert of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. As you enter the open-air plaza of Lincoln Center, your heart begins to pound in anticipation of the event which awaits you. The great lighted fountain at the center of the courtyard is going full blast. A buzz of anticipation seems to be in the air. A small glassed lobby on the lower story gives way to flights of stairs and escalators leading to the upper lobby where you are amazed by the three-sided lobby above, a wall of glass and marble shooting up three floors. You continue to ascend to your balcony seat. Members of the orchestral are already on stage tuning up. The ushers hurry last minute patrons to their seats on the main floor. The first violinist stands and plays middle “C” so that all the musicians may tune their instruments accordingly. She sits. A quiet descends over the hall. Through a side door on stage the conductor strolls out. An enthusiastic burst of applause accompanies her bow. She swiftly turns to face the musicians, raises her baton, and everyone falls silent awaiting the command that will begin the symphony.

Imagine for the moment that the musicians are actors, designers, and technicians and that the conductor is the stage director. In many ways, stage directors are like an orchestra conductor. The difference is that the stage director does not appear on stage during a performance. Nor is he or she the center of attention as the performance takes its course. A director’s work is normally completed at the end of the final dress rehearsal before opening night. Who is this alchemist that the audience doesn’t see but whose presence is palpably felt in virtually every production?

Stage directors have three primary duties and responsibilities: 1. They select, read, analyze and interpret the play and its meaning. 2. They audition and select performers and work with them during rehearsal to bring their roles to life. 3. They negotiate the “look” of the production with scene, costume, lighting, and sound designers.

The overall management of the artistic side of the production is entrusted to them by the organizers of the event. A great deal depends on their good judgment.

__Director, Play, and Concept__ Many directors normally choose the plays they direct. Some directors are selected to direct a particular work, either by the playwright or the producer. However a director comes to direct a play, he or she finds something in the work that is challenging and that speaks to them, no matter what the content. Sometimes it is the language of the play which a director finds appealing. The plays of David Mamet are often appealing to directors because of their taut language. Sometimes it is the story and the thought behind it which attracts. Most of George Bernard Shaw’s plays combine language, wit, and wisdom in carefully crafted stories which many directors find attractive. It could be the presence of a singularly interesting character. Robison Jeffer’s //Medea// or virtually any of Shakespeare’s great tragedies continue to appeal to directors and actors alike. Some directors are drawn to plays which raise tough social issues. Paula Vogel’s //How I Learned to Drive// is a recent work which deals with a contemporary social issue. No matter what draws a director to a play, something in it should attract and hold a director’s interest.

Once the play is chosen and studied, the director has it within his/her power to decide what the focus of the production will be. This aspect of the production process is not very well known or understood by audiences. It may be called many names -- point of view, controlling idea, vision, metaphor, spine, an so forth. All of these terms are just another way of identifying the same thing, which I describe here as the production concept.

A production concept is really a way for the director to communicate the meaning of the play to the audience through the actors and the work of the designers. It is a way to unify all aspects of the production behind a central idea. It serves as a blueprint or plan for the production to which everyone, including the director, may return again and again for inspiration and guidance.

Take this example. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is known for his inability to make decisions. His famous speech, “To be or not to be, that is the question.” is one of the many instances where Shakespeare allows him to articulate his indecisiveness. The production concept might well be “indecisiveness.” But this isn’t a very active or helpful way to translate Hamlet’s dilemma to actors and designers, much less to the audience. Suppose Hamlet’s search was for truth and justice and that both things were seen as a metaphor for light. Indeed, Hamlet seems to be wondering around in the dark through much of the play. If light and dark were contrasted in the play then possibilities would be somewhat better for translating the concept into practical images. Polonius, whom Hamlet kills, wears thick glasses because he can’t see well. He could be played as an ignorant pawn of Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle who killed his father. Hamlet’s father who appears to him as a Ghost could be a shaft of light (truth) who urges Hamlet to take revenge. Hamlet himself could wear spectacles up to that point in the play hinting that he is unable to clearly see the truth. It seems logical that he would do so because he has been away at college and has only come home to attend his father’s funeral. At the end of the play as Hamlet dies on stage and Fortenbras enters to take the throne, the stage might be flooded with light, symbolizing that justice has finally been done and the state has been restored to normal once again. In other words, the dark/light metaphor might well be used as the primary concept of the play. For those who watch FX, dark and light are used in every episode to symbolize the search for good (truth?) in a world in which evil exists.

The director Harold Clurman chose to use the word “spine” to define concept. In discussing his production of Eugene O’Neill’s //Long Day’s Journey into Night// for the 1965 production of the play in Tokyo he articulates his point of view as follows:

The eyes of each character are on the other. Foghorn–a desolate sound of aloneness. Loneliness–everyone is alone with his or her own secret and guilt.

The play is a self-examination, a search into oneself and into others. Through understanding to find forgiveness, relief, the connection of love which may overcome loneliness.

Long Day’s Journey (self-examination) into Night (the darkness of the self). The journey to self-discovery. The search for the true self which has somehow been lost.

Mary: “If I could only find the faith I lost so I could pray again!”

Later, “What is it, I’m looking for? I know it’s something I’ve lost.”

//The spine of the play:// to probe within oneself for the lost “something.” p. 254.

And finally, it is possible to set a play in a different time period from the period in which it was intended or to choose a setting totally different from the one established by the playwright, such as a circus, boxing ring, or any other place which carries specific overtones, in order to establish a particular point of view about the meaning of the play. In making such decisions, the director should be aware that he/she is distorting the original intention of the playwright and must be prepared to find evidence in the play which justifies such drastic departures otherwise the decision may seem to be arbitrary or capricious.

__Translating the Play to the Stage with Actors__ Besides reading and interpreting the play, the director’s most important duty is to work with actors. As we have seen the actors bring the play alive for the public and help to determine its success for failure with the public.

Casting: The process of working with actors begins with casting the play. Casting presumes that the director has arrived at a decision about the interpretation of the play and thus the casting choices he or she makes follows from a basic understanding of what the characters are to communicate about the play to the audience.

Before casting, the audition process provides an opportunity for the director to survey the available talent and to make appropriate choices. Directors and playwrights who work together in the rehearsal setting normally consult together before casting. Professional directors also work closely with producers in the casting process to make sure that the budget permits hiring actors that can be afforded and who are deemed appropriate for the roles. This often means working around contractual commitments an actor has already made sometimes changing the planned opening of the work. Among the many types of collaborations the work of directors with playwrights and with producers in the casting process is crucial in order to produce positive results on stage.

Often companies who work with a set stable of actors and actresses have a narrow range of choices different from commercial organizations which are putting together a group of performers one production at a time. The advantage of working with a known group of performers over and over again is the kinds of communication that are developed among performers working on several projects together over a period of time. The ensemble that develops in a company is often not possible when a cast unfamiliar with each other’s work comes together for the first time. Summer stock companies often hire performers to play different roles in several plays during a summer season. Achieving the right mix and balance in a summer stock setting is bound to influence the production concept of each of the works in the season.

Thus, casting always makes a statement about a production, one which the director usually is obliged to live with. Many directors consider casting choices so essential that they credit them with more than 50% (some think 90%!) of the success of a production. The wrong choice may result in more work for them and may even sabotage a potentially excellent production. The right choice goes far to unify and sell a weak script and can even considerably reduce the work load of a director.

Rehearsal Schedule: Once a play is cast rehearsals begin. Rehearsals are carefully planned sequences of events that provide an opportunity for the actors to becomes familiar with the plays and their characters, for the director to shape the production through blocking and stage compositions, for the tempo and pace of the performance to be established, for the design elements to be added and shaped with the actors, and for the whole production to be polished and unified.

Many years ago the first rehearsal began when a director read the entire play and explained his interpretation of it to the cast. Typically, a rehearsal period begins today with the full cast reading the play together for the first time. Several days may be assigned for reading and discussing the play with the cast, depending on the disposition of the director.

Once the read throughs are completed, blocking rehearsals begin. Depending on the time the director has for the whole rehearsal process, blocking rehearsals may begin after the first read through. Blocking is the process of determining the movements and stage positions of the actors.

Often when an act or scene has been blocked it is followed by a run through of the act or scene from beginning to end without a stop so that adjustments and fine tuning of the blocking may be made.

Memorization of the roles follows shortly on the heals of the blocking rehearsals. During this period, which is often the most traumatic for an actor, he or she must remember lines, cues, and movements in sequence. This is the period when the services of a prompter are indispensable. A special individual may follow book and cue actors when they call, “Line.” A really good prompter is one of the most valuable members of the rehearsal team and makes detailed notes about which lines actors are muffing and where they are substituting words for those in the text. Getting off book is often laborious and usually appears to reverse the forward moments of the work that has been accomplished up to that point. But it is essential if the actors are to move forward.

Run throughs off book are then fairly common, during which time the director does not stop and start the rehearsal in order to permit the actors to begin to sense the flow of the scenes.

Polishing rehearsals focus on characterization, business, and tempo, rhythm and climaxes. These take various forms and usually help to solidify the work that has been accomplished to this point and allow the director to focus and point actions and line readings which will draw the attention of the audience to the play’s meaning.

Run throughs help the actors to establish the flow of the play and allow their characters to grow and take final shape.

When technical rehearsals begin the major work of director with actors is usually over and the business of shaping the look of the production is underway. This involves addition of settings, properties, lights, and sound in various stages. The actors begin to explore the space, adjust their positions on stage, find their light, and learn to work with sound cues. Each step is a new step for the actors, as well as the technicians who operate the backstage activities that are so crucial if the show is to be a success.

Finally, costumes and makeup are added in the final days of the rehearsal period before opening. The period of adjustment is near completion. During dress rehearsals, it is rare that the director stops the momentum of the rehearsal to make adjustments for the actors are now struggling to reestablish the flow of the play and to bring back the unity they established with it during the final days before the technical rehearsals.

Composition and picturization: In another sense, directors may also be thought of as painters. On the proscenium arch stage they create pictures for the audience. Pictures which are designed to reinforce the meaning of the scene and act. Students who train to be directors are often taught to compose the scenes of the play with a view to achieving a painterly composition of the costumed actors in the performance space, surrounded by the appropriate scenery and lighting. Obviously, directors who work this way must conceive the look they want to achieve for a particular moment in the play based on their concept and using their imagination for they cannot possibly know how the scene will eventually look until the work of the costume, scene, and lighting designers is completed. Yet, they may seek to achieve the appropriate pictures to help to tell the story dramatically. In creating such compositions they use the same elements and principles of design to painters -- the elements of design which are line, mass, form, color, texture, and space and the principles of design which are unity, variety, harmony, rhythm, value, proportion, and emphasis. Often, they are taught to work on the climactic scenes first and then to design backward building the toward the picture they want to achieve with the climax very much as a painter depicts climactic moments in a painting. Work on the proscenium stage allows picturization to more easily take place because the audience sees the stage from one side, albeit many members of the audience are not seeing a climactic moment from the same ideal place in the house. Directors who work in the thrust stage or the arena stage are often given to thinking of composition as though they were sculptors. In these venues the actors are like free standing sculpture. Obviously, the compositional elements must rely on other means to achieve focus in a climax. Under these circumstances, directors use levels and space more than they do the other elements and principles.

Director and Stage Manager: Throughout the entire rehearsal period the director is ordinarily accompanied by a stage manager and perhaps an assistant stage manager. The role of the stage manager is crucial in any production for he or she eventually assumes the leadership of the production team when the director’s job is done.

Among the many duties of stage managers are the following: 1. Making a prompt book from the script of the play which eventually becomes the master prompt book used throughout the rehearsals and run of the show. 2. Laying out the ground plan on the floor of the rehearsal hall. 3. Keeping contact sheets for the cast and crew members. 4. Posting rehearsal schedules and thereby communicating any important information to the cast and crew. 5. Setting up the rehearsal hall for each rehearsal. 6. Recording script changes, blocking, and directorial information in the prompt book. 7. Walking through scenes for absent actors. 8. Marking warnings in the prompt book for entrances and exits and light and sound cues. 9. Serving as a liaison with the costume crew head and the property crew head. 10. Prompting actors. 11. Recording all technical cues in the prompt book. 12. Marking the furniture and props on stage when furniture positions have finally been established by the director and designer. 13. Setting up the stage manager’s desk and communications system with backstage, light, and sound crew members. 14. Maintaining discipline among crew members and serving as central clearing house for any changes that are being made during the technical rehearsals and dress rehearsals that will have an effect on the actors. 15. Establishing a check in policy before performances for both cast and crew. 16. Calling “places” before the production is to begin. 17. Coordinating the intermission policy and late seating policy with the house manager. 18. Coordinating the policy concerning visitors backstage. 19. Noting any important changes that the actors may be making in the performance that the director ought to be alerted to.

Director and Dramaturg: Before the director emerged on the scene in mid-19th century Europe, dramaturgs were making their appearance in the German theatre of the mid-18 century. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing is credited with popularizing the word in his collected essays entitled, //Hamburg Dramaturgy//. Essentially, today in the USA there are two kinds of dramaturgs, both of which are associated with many not-for-profit theatres. The first kind is associated with literary management and will be discussed in Chapter VII. The second is the production dramaturg who assists the director in preparing for and rehearsal the production. It is in this sense that the role of the dramaturg is discussed here.

Dramaturgy is derived from the Greek word //drame//, action of doing, and the suffix //-urgy// or process or working. Somewhat like metalurgy, the working of metals.

Production dramaturgs work with plays, preparing the text for performance and advising the director and actors during the rehearsal process. A dramaturg may also prepare program notes, lobby displays, and perform outreach duties for a theatre organization. This can take the form of offering recommendations for judicious cutting or shaping of a text for performance and research into material that may prove beneficial to the director and actors as they interpret the text. Dramaturgs often do research project into matters that will eventually help the play to be better understood by the director, actors, and audiences.

In the absence of a dramaturg, the director often performs many of the same functions, although perhaps not always in as great a detail owing to his/her other duties to the production team.

__Director and Audience__ Throughout the entire preparation and rehearsal process a director serves as the eyes of the audience. He/she reflects on the play in place of the audience. Tyrone Guthrie says it better than I can in his essay, “An Audience of One,” in a lecture delivered at the Royal Society of Arts, London, March 10, 1952 quoted by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy in Directors on Directing (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Inc., 1963) pp. 255-256. He can perform that function [meaning that of an audience], and if he is a good producer [in Great Britain the director is called the producer] he will perform it better than the average audience; he will be more intelligently critical and alive, and the rehearsals will not be dreary learning of routine; they will be a creative act that is ultimately going to be a performance.

That is why, in my opinion, the analogy between the producer and the conductor holds good. A //good// conductor is a man with a fine technique of the stick. He has a clear beat and an expressive beat, and is an interesting chap for the audience to watch. He can bring one section in with a fine gesture and blot another out. He knows his score, and so on, but it is all interesting showmanship. But the //great// conductor does not require any of those things. He can have a terrible beat and look like nothing on earth, but if he is a great conductor every man in the orchestra will give, under his baton, not only a better performance than he would under any conductor, but a better performance than he knew he could give. That is not got out of them by instruction; it is a process of psychic evocation. Precisely the same thing holds good for the producer of a play. His function at its best is one of psychic evocation, and it is performed almost entirely unconsciously. Certain conscious tricks can come in the way or aid the process, but this evocation thing comes from God knows where. It is completely unconscious. Nobody knows when it is working, and nobody knows why it is working. Some people, and only the very best, have it; others do not. I could not answer why or wherefore, but I am just convinced that that is so.”

__Views of Practitioners__

Harold Clurman: Harold Clurman (1901–1980) was considered one of the more prominent American theatre directors of his generation. He was educated at Columbia University, the Sorbonne, and studied with Jacque Copeau at the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier in Paris. He studied directing from Richard Boleslavsky. At the beginning of his career he worked with Kenneth McGowan, Robert Edmond Jones and Eugene O’Neill. He founded the Group Theatre of New York and served as one of its principal directors and managing director. Among his directing credits are //The Member of the Wedding//, //Desire Under the Elms// , //Long Day’s Journey Into Night// , //Bus Stop// , //Tiger at the Gate// , //TheWaltz of the Toreadors// , //Heartbreak House// , //Incident at Vichy// , //Uncle Vanya// , among many others. He nurtured Clifford Odets and directed some of his important plays in the early days of The Group Theatre. In 1945 he published a revealing account of the Group Theatre entitled //, The Fervent Years–The Story of the Group Theatre//. He was a noted theatre critic writing for //The Nation//, //New Republic// , and London’s //Observer//. He also taught in the graduate program at Hunter College and conducted private classes for actors. Among the honors he received during his lifetime was the coveted La Croix de Chavalier de la Legion d’Honneur.

Mr. Clurman’s thought on directing appear in his book entitled, //On Directing// (New York: Macmillan Company, 1972), pp. 3-14.

It has been a commonplace (I first heard the formulation some years ago from Peter Ustinov) that while the French is a playwright’s theatre, the English an actor’s theatre, the American is a director’s theatre.

This contains as much truth as most such dicta do. Considered aesthetically, it is a total falsehood. The theatre cannot live through any single organ of its being. The theatre as an art is indivisible. The finest text is often seriously damaged or destroyed by an inadequate cast or improper direction, occasionally by inept physical (scenic) treatment or even by the wrong playhouse.

Excellent acting has been known to compensate, that is, to lend value and meaning to wretched literary material. But the ablest direction will sometimes fail with the best of actors when the dramatist’s contribution is basically empty or dull. On the other hand, we have all seen brilliant performances–viewed as independent factors–rob meritorious dramas of their significance //as theatre//.

Anouilh’s //The Waltz of the Toreadors// –one of his most scintillating plays–failed in Paris because, as Anouilh once admitted, he chose to direct it himself. With better casts and two different directors the play was successful in both London and New York.

Before proceeding any further a decisive distinction, crucial to my “argument,” must be made. There is a certain ambiguity in theatrical terminology which ultimately lends to critical confusion. We speak of “the play,” by which we mean the written text (script). The play signifies //drama//, a form of literature. On stage it becomes a production. The play does not exist in the theatre as a written text; it has been absorbed in the process of production. Drama is “translated” or transformed into the person of the actor–“the body of the art of the theatre,” as Stark Young put it. But the actor does not exist in isolation on the stage. His physical being–appearance, voice, movement, manner of address–is seen in a specific environment. Architectural and scenic elements mediate through color, illumination, costume, music, etc. All these materially alter or enhance the quality of the original script. This new phenomenon born from the fact of production is the Play.

That is what Pirandello meant when he said, “In the theatre the work of the author does not exist any longer,” and what Stark Young with less precision suggested when he wrote, “Drama is not literature but literature in terms of the theatre.” Granville-Barker put it another way. “The playwright,” he said, “is essentially a collaborator, even though he be the creative beginning of the collaboration.”

All these apothegms need further explanation and qualification, to which we shall repeatedly return. To begin with, I shall simply assert that the theatre is not an art of separate elements arithmetically cumulative but an art which might be seen to form a single organism. One or several members of this organism may make the whole function, that is, come to life. To make an analogy from another art we might say that while a painting may be discussed in terms of color, drawing and composition, it is a //picture// that we look at. The “heart” of the theatre is not situated in one of its organs, though certain of these may nourish and quicken the others.

The director is important certainly, but he is not all-important. Though without the actor the theatre is almost inconceivable, not even he contains the art. This may be said also of the playwright himself. No part is the whole!

Certain actors have infused life into texts held to be faulty or threadbare. Shaw, in an essay which is one of the masterpieces of theatre criticism, speaks of Duse’s artistic superiority to Sudermann, the author of “Magda” (//Heimat// ). //La Dame aux Camelias// may be said to have endured by virtue of extraordinary embodiments of the title role. But perhaps there is more to //La Dame// than we commonly suppose. The great Russian director Meyerhold thought so.

It is also true that gifted directors with the collaboration of responsive casts have occasionally made lively theatre out of feeble scripts. Some texts, on the other hand, are themselves so vital that they have sustained our interest in rather indifferent performances. We can all remember the painful occasions when Shakespeare on the stage has not only been rendered dull but nearly unintelligible through productions in which the flaw was not merely a matter of muffled, incorrect or inaudible speech.

The question of the director’s importance is not as simple as it might appear because, to begin with, due to the theatre’s nature, it is not the director alone who gives the play its direction. This is something which the neophyte director, for his own efficiency and well- being, should constantly bear in mind. The director has an independent function but, like everyone in the theatre, he must depend on his collaborators.

The direction of a play is to a certain extent implicit in its script. The playwright as playwright is in part a director. If he is truly a man of the theatre (some playwrights only suffer the theatre but do not feel they belong to it) the playwright “sees” the play on the stage as he writes. His dialogue as well as his notations of stage behavior suggest movement and part of the total physical life that the script is to acquire when it is produced.

If this thought should depress a would-be director he may rejoice in the correlated axiom that the director, as we shall discover, contributes in more ways than one to the making of the play.

In passing we may recall Gordon Craig’s injunction top the dramatist that he refrain from setting down any remarks at all about the direction or performance of his text. But Craig always went too far, in the manner of the poet he was, to emphasize a new and extremely valuable way of thinking about the theatre.

Actors also contribute to and partially shape direction. I am not referring to the actor’s possible insistence on having his own way in interpreting a role–and hence the play....The actor will-nilly contributes to the direction of a play through his natural temperament, intuition, imagination and skill. Indeed, the good director will stimulate the actor to make such a contribution. Too great a dependence on the director is unhealthy for both actor and play.

I saw an interesting production of Tennessee Williams’ //The Glass Menagerie// in Paris in which the very meaning of the play was considerably altered because actress playing Amanda had very little of the substance of Laurette Taylor’s genius. This may have been due to miscasting (a directorial blemish) or possibly to a misinterpretation or even to the director’s having a different interpretation from the one I supposed was justified.

This is a subtle matter, involving both critical judgment and, if you will, theatre aesthetics. It must be broached at another point. Let us remind ourselves at this juncture that one of the agonies and wonders of the theatre is that the play is always a //new// thing with each production, indeed with almost every performance. This thought so distressed Craig that he went so far as to maintain with his usual bent toward paradox that acting was no art at all. Still, at another time he devoted a whole volume to extolling the art of Henry Irving!

Significant bits of by-play (“business” in stage parlance) are often introduced by actors through spontaneous invention. Only an obtuse director refuses to take advantage of such enrichment of the play’s fabric. Still, he has the right and duty to veto what he considers inappropriate or misleading. The director may therefore be forgiven when he takes credit for some of the actors’ improvisations and accepts compliments for them!

The play’s scenic arrangement (the floor plan, architectural form, visual style, etc.), for which the director is responsible even when he has had little to do with their actual design, is another contribution to the shaping of a play’s meaning. Boris Aronson’s sets added special luster to such musicals as //Cabaret//, //Company// and //Follies//. but by his own admission his setting of Odets’ //Paradise Lost// (which I directed) detracted from what he had felt about the play when he saw it acted on the bare stage. But in such cases, as we have already implied, the director rather than the designer must be held to account.

Even the audience may affect the direction of the play. An extreme instance of this was //Arsenic and Old Lace//, which legend has it was directed as a thriller but which, because of the opening-night audience’s reaction, was transformed into an uproariously approved farce. It was played as such from that moment to the end of its long run.

In what sense then can the term “the director’s theatre” be justified? The director, as we think of him today, is a recent phenomenon in theatre history. In my early days as a playgoer–in the “teens”–hardly any director except David Belasco enjoyed program credit. This does not mean that the play had not been directed in one fashion or another.

The director has to some degree always been present. The playwright sometimes served in that capacity. Aeschylus is said to have directed his plays, as we know Moliere did his. The //Choregus// (leader of the Chorus) in the Greek theatre was in effect a director. In other instances, the director was the producer, the leading actor or the actor manager. Even if it is conceivable for a theatrical performance to be produced without anyone officially in charge, it is clear that someone, through force of nerve, prestige, talent or power, will give the performance some sort of coherence.

The director as we know him today is a production of the nineteenth-century theatre. For convenience’ sake (I will not dispute the accuracy of this statement with scholars or historians), let us say that modern direction began in 1866 with the Duke of Sax- Meiningen, who was chiefly a painter and a stage designer. The actual staging of his productions was done by Ludwig Kronek but the Duke himself was the founder and moving force of the Meiningen Players. It is also worth noting that Otto Brahm, the creator in 1889 of the famous German Free Theatre who introduced Gerhardt Hauptmann and other of the new realists to the playgoing public, was first a critic and never actually staged his productions. But like the Duke of Meiningen, Brahm set the tone and the style, and placed the stamp of his personality on his company.

What Meiningen did was to establish the idea of //ensemble// playing, the coordination of the various components of an acting company so that a unified impression might be created–the total performance summing up to a Play. This coordination included not only the main actors, but bit players and the so-called extras or supernumeraries as well. Meiningen, moreover, was much concerned with historical authenticity in costuming, furnishings and all those objects used on the stage which come under the heading of “props” (or “properties”). Beyond their historicity he wished them to be tasteful and set in a theatrically helpful arrangement.

The Meiningen Players influenced not only Stanislavsky, the famous Russian director (in discussing them the famous Russian director emphasizes Kronek rather than the Duke), but also Andre Antoine, who //circa// 1887 introduced naturalism to French theatregoers. Henry Irving, too, fell under the Meiningen spell.

What crystallized the concept of stage direction as we understand it today may be gathered from the writings, beginning in 1905, of Gordon Craig. The mainspring of the Craig doctrine is his insistence on unity. A Play, Craig insisted, is not a text on which actors, setting, music, music, etc., are superimposed, but a single body of which all the separate elements are parts. This precept, from which I derive my own “credo,” has manifold consequence.

In the early nineteenth century in England–to go no further back to confine ourselves to theatre of our own language–the texts of plays were hardly respected and perhaps as a result were barely respectable. What was then called Shakespeare on the stage was nothing Shakespeare would have acknowledged or even recognized. Shakespeare and most other dramatists where treated as mere scenarists. Their characters and plots were employed as vehicles for the exhibition of actors’ talents.

Costumes and props were not only a matter of the actor’s (or theatre lessee’s) choice, but were generally what the theatre had in stock and were rarely relevant to a particular period or a definite style. “Scenery” was conventionalized without regard to period, place, mood or specific use. The companies were composed of stars–some of them magnificent actors– supported by routine players who often were accorded no more than two or three rehearsals with the guest star. The star dictated stage positions (he himself usually occupied stage center), movement and business, to which the other actors had to accommodate themselves. That was the “staging.” People came to see the great man do his stuff.

There could be very little differentiation in lighting except between the bright and the dark. Means of illumination were primitive and not readily controllable. Interpretation was implicit chiefly in the star’s performance.

With the renewal of interest in the literary or artistic aspects of a play and the increased technical methods for the projection of a play’s significance on the stage a leader became a necessity. If all the elements of production were to be made into one theatre work–a true Play–then there had to be someone to conduct them to that end. Hence the emergence of the contemporary stage director.

In America today the author is contractually the pivot of the organized production. His consent must be obtained as to choice of cast, director and general interpretation. But, to quote Boris Aronson, “The theatre is a collective art in which the strongest man rules.”

The playwright very rarely exercises his legal right either because he is timid or more frequently because he is intelligent enough to realize his incapacity. Beyond his own writing he is seldom a practiced theatre craftsman. He is usually uncertain as to the means which most suitably serve to embody his text. There are playwrights who are effective directors of their own and sometimes other people’s scripts, but the talent for writing and the talent for directing are infrequently to be found in the same person. So at this point we need not dwell on the playwright, who only partially understands the significance of what he has written or appreciates the theatrical potentialities of his script.

The actor is (hopefully) a creator. Samuel Johnson said that the actor only //recites// : but no living playwright is happy if his actors do no more than that. As a creator the actor has an artistic weight of his own–not to speak of the other kinds of influence he may unadvisedly exert. How the actor is to be dealt with so that he not only will be “effective” for himself and his admirers but also for the entire “team” responsible for the play is one of the chief problems of direction.

We are now better prepared to understand why the term “the director’s theatre” has come into use. That fine American actor Louis Calhern once declared, “The reason why the director has become so powerful is that there are no more great actors.” If we pursue this line of argument we might conclude that the reason why the director up until very recently has been less important in England than in America is that there are still so many splendid actors or, at any rate, stars there. It is a fact that on the whole English actors of note prefer directors who “interfere” as little as possible, though there has been a change in this regard in the past twenty-five years.

Such actors which the director to be utterly precise in “blocking” (or staging) a play–that is, in assigning the placement of actors on the boards and indicating crosses from one position to another–but they are wary about being //directed// –that is, helped in the creation of their parts. The assumption is that there must be a conflict between director and actor or that where the actor is a truly creative person (and what star thinks of himself as anything less?) he needs little or no “outside” assistance.

The assumption is mistaken. It is based on the practice of the two artistically least organized theatres of the Western world: the English and the American. Even the value of ensemble playing was regarded with skepticism by the playwright-critic St. John Ervine on the grounds that actors of eminent stature through personal artistic bias must of necessity rebel against the “totalitarianism” of the ensemble idea. Even the Meiningen Players, where the director, Kronek, according to Stanislavsky, was very much the director, numbered among their members such a fine artist as Albert Basserman who throughout his career worked with directors of first-rate caliber: Otto Brahm and Max Reinhardt.

Reinhardt’s various companies were always composed of magnificent actors. The original Moscow Art Theatre, the prime example in the early twentieth century of the ensemble ideal, boasted a company in which at least six members possessed star radiance. Though contrary evidence may be adduced from the examples of such productions as Peter Brook’s //Marat/Sade// or Tyrone Guthrie’s //The House of Atreus// (cast with good companies without “star names”), I should like to make it axiomatic that the finer an acting company is, the greater the need for a masterly director. This may ensure that what is presented are plays rather than exhibitions.

Meyerhold’s theatre in the Soviet Union (till his career was stamped out by state interdiction and the ukase on “socialist realism”) and Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble–perhaps, too, Joan Littlewood’s first company at Stratford East in London–might be dubbed “director’s theatre.” These theatres, and others like them (Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre, for example), are theatres in which the director is a true leader, that is, an educator, a person with a special aesthetic and technique who trains his company accordingly. Still, even Meyerhold leaned heavily on two or three brilliant actors, just as Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble profited greatly by the presence of Weigel, Schall and Ernst Busch.

Toward the end of his career Max Reinhardt was inclined to believe that our industrial age of mass production was not conducive to the formation of outstanding actors. (He might perhaps have cited our American theatre as an example.)

There is something in this. The disarray of the American theatre economy at present makes the development of major actors extremely difficult. There is not sufficiently sustained employment. Of gifted young people there are enough to establish as many permanent troupes as there are anywhere else. But even the so-called successful actor in America is usually confined to a limited range of parts. He seeks a fat role in a hit show, lest he diminish his market value. He fears for his status as a desirable performer. A good many very able actors in America today are more often active in scene classes (or “studios”) than on the stage. They supplement these “workouts” with appearances in summer stock and guest performances in regional theatres, films and on television. The young actor perforce remains an amateur.

One of the worst effects of this situation is the actor’s loss of confidence in his profession and in himself. Psychologically the American actor under fifty is nearly always a “beginner.” By the time he is fifty he is either out of the theatre or a warped person.

Who can encourage, inspire, renew the faith of the actor in this condition? Why, the new medicine man, the well-know, the much-touted director! A superstition surrounds this character. (Superstititon, even if only in the form of publicity, is always a sign of a sick state of affairs. Where nothing is secure, magic must work its wonders.) The director, the actor trusts and prays, will sustain him, make him a star. The director as fetish is a symptom; “the director’s theatre” is very often little better than a commercial tag.

Capable direction is no doubt a vital factor in the making of a sound production. There is certainly a distinction to be made between the abilities of one director and those of another. But if we list the plays which have been highly successful on Broadway we may well arrive at the conclusion that any number of efficient directors might have returned box-office hits from their scripts. The quality of each production would have been different with each director, but it is rarely the quality of direction which is perceived by the audience, whose spokesman is the run-of-the-mill critic, but rather the degree of monetary success the production may achieve. No matter: When a director has turned out two or three hits, supernatural powers are attributed to him; he is regarded as a “genius,” the cause of everyone’s prosperity and joy.

Signs of this peculiar syndrome may be observed at early rehearsals of a new Broadway show. Except where a star actor is involved (in which case he has been consulted as the desirability of a particular director or is aware of the a director’s prestige) many actors– especially the younger ones–sit in a state of quasi-cataleptic expectancy. They are waiting to be electrified, exalted, transfigured. They seem to have converted themselves into so many vessels into which they hope the director will pour the elixir of his greatness.

At one time I might have agreed with Granville-Barker who said, “The art of the theatre is the art of acting or it is nothing.” But this is only a partial truth, though it is always worth keeping in mind. Later I arrived at what I believe was a happy formulation: “The director is the author if the stage play,” a generalization of which I am now somewhat skeptical. It is deceptive; a good measure of conceit is concealed in it. It may lead to disappointment and trouble for all concerned. The art of the theatre is contained in the entity of production in which the director may play a crucial role.

Direction is a job, a craft, a profession, and at best, an art. The director must be an organizer, a teacher, a politician, a psychic detective, a lay analyst, a technician, a creative being. Ideally, he should know literature (drama), acting, the psychology of the actor, the visual arts, music, history, and above all, he must understand people. He must inspire confidence. All of which means he must be a “great lover.” In today’s theatre there are other voices–voices of women and minority communities which have begun to be heard. There are special issues that confront these individual in their roles as stage directors. Below are a few selected opinions.

Brenda Hubbard Brenda Hubbard has worked in the professional theatre. Among her important contributions was that of Artistic Director of the Portland, Oregon Repertory Theatre where she produced over 30 productions, directing 15 of them herself. She has also acted with the Seattle Repertory Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theatre Company, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, among many other organizations. She has a BFA in acting from the University of Washington and an MFA in directing from the University of Portland. Her remarks are quoted in //Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Influence of Gender on Their Work// by Rebecca Daniels. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1996, p. 117.

In my experience watching male directors work, I think they tend to be less comfortable on the feeling level. They don’t talk as much about feelings. They talk more in terms of action, and they see things much more in terms of action. I think that men tend to choose people to work with where there will be a minimal amount of emotional interaction, emotional problems. I think male directors will want to choose people who are emotionally easy to work with. I think I’m inclined to be more flexible in dealing with people’s emotions. I’ve really noticed that men are less inviting in terms of asking you how you feel about what’s going on in the rehearsal process. A lot of men I know, that I’ve been directed by, don’t even really make eye contact with me or any of the women in the cast, so in terms of inviting communication, there isn’t that at all.

Seret Scott Seret Scott has directed at the George Street Play House/Ford Theatre, the Second Stage Company, Old Globe Theatre, Studio Arena Theatre at the Alliance Theatre, the Indiana Repertory Theatre at the Humana Festival, the Alley Theatre, among many others. Her ideas are quoted in //Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Influence of Gender on Their Work// by Rebecca Daniels. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1996, p. 66.

Most anything I’m dealing with is going to come initially through an ethnic place, before gender. Any of the battles I’m fighting seem to be more geared toward ethnicity. A lot of that has to do with the fact that more women are directing now, being allowed into the inner circle. Now the big problem for me is, “But you’re black, so what do you know about anything //at all//, being a black female?” Double whammy. They seem to think I’m totally stupid, I have no creative vision, and what would I know about anything? The perception is that I’m luck to be where I am, that I don’t know very much, and I don’t know anything about other ethnic groups. That’s what I encounter. It’s always there. But it goes away the more I work. People start to say, “I think you need to consider Seret for such and such a project” because I have proven myself in so many areas. Everybody feels like they’re always proving themselves. Not just me.

Sharon Ott Sharon Ott is the Artistic Director of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. She has directed at theatres in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, San Diego, Washington, DC, and Boston. Her opinions are quoted in //Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Influence of Gender on Their Work// by Rebecca Daniels. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1996, p. 104.

Women really are a little more apt to be collaborative in their general notion of how things should be done than men. I don’t know why that is, but I do believe it’s true. Responsibility is shared laterally. Women are particularly comfortable with that, and not as likely to want to assume a hierarchical order with them at the top but rather a more lateral order than, if they’re the leader, has them at the center. It’s a circle radiating out from something as opposed to a line going from bottom to top. Sometimes that can be problematic because I think that society still is based on a hierarchical behavior model or organizing principle. It’s more obvious to me from the women film directors I know. The film industry in America is so male, and it’s so much based on this notion of the director as a kind of fascistic major domo. Almost all the women film directors I know get into trouble because they do things like ask the cinematographer what he thinks of this or that idea, and the producer will say, “No, you don’t do that.” It creates chaos on the set because it’s perceived as not being authoritative, whereas really it’s being collaborative. It’s seeing yourself as the leader, but in a different way, like at the center of a wheel as opposed to the top of a column. I do think that affects artistic choices and also general organizational things.