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rmFor a long time, it wasn't that I just wasn't in directing; it was that I actually scoffed at it. I found actors who wanted to direct tedious and directors who had been actors necessarily suspect. Then I got over myself.
Part one of getting over myself was experiencing a lot of direction that didn't work for me as a performer. Now sure, it's arguably (and we'll get back to this later) not about direction working for the actor, it's about direction working for the show, for the story. And while "you're over-thinking it" is a valid piece of direction, especially for someone who processes the world kind of intensely (that'd be me), the number of times I've had directors explain to me, quite snidely, that intellect is a liability in an actor is more than I can count on my two hands.
Part two of getting over myself was going to NIDA, where we were asked to cast a directorial eye on everything, mostly just for the purpose of being better at thinking about ourselves as actors. But the bug bit hard and fast. There wasn't a moment in class where I didn't have a "but if you just...." -- Sometimes it would make the scene better. Sometimes it would just make it mine. I felt like an asshole about it a lot.
And I think in the middle of that I even sent Megan (my then roommate and Eames in Inception: The Musical) a whiny email from the youth hostel's computer that had a whole bunch of keys missing (making writing even more of an art as opposed to a science than usual) bemoaning that I was one of those assholes now. She laughed at me. A lot. But it's not like she was surprised.
When I came back to New York, I started finding things to direct. Other people's short plays. My short plays. It was a bucket of fun, and one hell of a learning experience. Because at NIDA, I may have acquired an eye for the task, and discovered that for someone that can't draw I will storyboard ANYTHING just to figure it out (we had to storyboard scenes we were doing for our film and TV unit -- and I came back with a 20 shot thing after noodling on it for 30 minutes at lunch, and everyone else had a page and a half maybe (so 4 or 5 shots) and looked at me like I had three heads). But a director has to be good, really good, at a hell of a lot more than just making the story work.
The way I figure it, in addition to knowing how to tell the story and getting all the moving parts of a production working together to tell a story, a director has to really get other people and get what they need to give what the director needs fast. That means, among other things, having a political mind and a careful tongue. Add to this the need to be a good listener while being decisive enough to inspire confidence, and those are some serious people skills you need, not just as a side note to the artistic skills, but very possibly as the centerpiece to those artistic skills.
I could say that directing a show is like herding cats, but it's not really, even if yes, sometimes it can feel that way, especially when you've just been asked about ten questions more than you feel you have the capacity for about three days later than you had planned for those issues to come up. But if I said that directing a show is like herding cats, then we might all get the impression that being a taskmaster with a brain larger than a walnut is about the only requirement for the job, which it's really, really not.
And we'd also miss out on talking about stuff like Pygmalion and uncomfortable BDSM allegories. It's the sort of topic I could, or should, feel guilty about. Except for the thing where on the list of places I'm speaking from, ignorance isn't really one of them. I've been the awkward girl with the poor speech who doesn't know her table service; I've been the sub who didn't understand the purpose of her tasks (often because they didn't have one, which is a problem, at least in my conception of the world, YMMV as we all do this stuff for different reasons); and I've been the actor who knew shit wasn't quite clicking and it was my job to fix it, if only someone would help show me the way to how. And I have, in each of those scenarios, been the recipient of everything from profound grace that has made me a finer thing to a certain cruel indifference.
I've also, thankfully, had the privilege of watching people who are really good at their craft direct. The time I spent at rehearsals of The Three Furies didn't just make me a better artist, it made me a better person. That show, which included heightened reality and queer and kink themes while also being about people who have actually existed, was a brutal thing on its cast and presented a rawness and truth about identity, sexuality and being the muse on stage that was blindingly uncomfortable and probably exactly what I needed on my little Australian adventure. If I hadn't already started cluing into the responsibility a director has for and to his actors, let me tell you, it would have slapped me across the face right then and there. It was a privilege to be in the room. No one had to let me witness that process or speak to it. Many a reasonable person wouldn't have.
My point is, that while blocking and lights and costumes and what you're trying to illustrate out of a text are all vitally important, is that actors aren't chess pieces and they don't all function the same, and they are often going to need very different things from each other and from their director. And if you're the director? You better figure out what those things are as fast as you fucking can, and then wait thirty seconds before opening your damn mouth. Decisiveness is important. So is double-checking your work.
None of this necessarily came particularly naturally to me. I'm a fantastic read of people, and giving people what they need, and steering people to what they can be are huge turn-ons for me emotionally and intellectually. But I am impatient. I do get tired out by people, not because I don't love them and aren't fascinated by them, but because I'm just wired that way.
And I've had to learn, completely inorganically, how to have authority and how to be decisive. Horseback riding helped with that a lot. So has flying a plane. And fencing. Although each one has also made me see how much more work I have to do, not because I'm also an actor and not because of how I sometimes like to fuck, but because as an awkward girl-child in a very peculiar and old-fashioned environment I wasn't raised into these skills. It's not that I'm working without a net -- it's that unless I scrapbook one together, I am working without a map.
I talk, often, about wanting to be a finer thing. It comes from dance. From hands that lifted my chin, turned my wrist, and corrected my spine. I had a childhood of being mastered and molded in front of a mirror. Every day I saw what others saw when I was deemed worthy of correction. I was entranced, not with the way my teachers looked at me, but the way I saw them look at me in the mirror. It was a story I never got less hungry for, and it's a way of holding myself I've never lost. The tilt of my chin and the movements of my wrists will always tell you how I feel. They will also always tell you how I've been taught.
Which is why as an adult, I've had so little patience for the people who would marvel at my supposed delicacy and take my wrists in their hands and move me around, to see if I worked like a doll. Not inanimate, not a doll, not a chess piece. Being an actor doesn't change that. The angle of the neck must not just indicate grief or pride or murder, but feel it.
I won't tell you what my specific goals are for working with actors in general, because the what often varies as much as the how. But I will tell you that with all the balls I have in the air when I'm directing (and also often having to be an engine of Making Things Happen on a more production-type front), that matters of command and control are never far from front of mind. But they're not, despite how my experiences both leading and being led have shaped me, first and foremost, about other people. They're about governing myself, and being my own master, who can afford to listen, decide, and take time to find the response that the show and the people making it most need.
The rest follows.
[ Dogboy & Justine is a story about power and responsibility and the sex work theme is just one of the ways we get to that aspect of the characters' journeys.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider contributing to Dogboy & Justine's fundraising drive on Kickstart.com. We need to receive at least $6,000 in pledges by December 21st in order to receive funding. As of this writing, we're 52% of the way there. You can help by contributing money, boosting the signal, or just hanging out here and joining the conversation. Thanks for reading! ]
Part one of getting over myself was experiencing a lot of direction that didn't work for me as a performer. Now sure, it's arguably (and we'll get back to this later) not about direction working for the actor, it's about direction working for the show, for the story. And while "you're over-thinking it" is a valid piece of direction, especially for someone who processes the world kind of intensely (that'd be me), the number of times I've had directors explain to me, quite snidely, that intellect is a liability in an actor is more than I can count on my two hands.
Part two of getting over myself was going to NIDA, where we were asked to cast a directorial eye on everything, mostly just for the purpose of being better at thinking about ourselves as actors. But the bug bit hard and fast. There wasn't a moment in class where I didn't have a "but if you just...." -- Sometimes it would make the scene better. Sometimes it would just make it mine. I felt like an asshole about it a lot.
And I think in the middle of that I even sent Megan (my then roommate and Eames in Inception: The Musical) a whiny email from the youth hostel's computer that had a whole bunch of keys missing (making writing even more of an art as opposed to a science than usual) bemoaning that I was one of those assholes now. She laughed at me. A lot. But it's not like she was surprised.
When I came back to New York, I started finding things to direct. Other people's short plays. My short plays. It was a bucket of fun, and one hell of a learning experience. Because at NIDA, I may have acquired an eye for the task, and discovered that for someone that can't draw I will storyboard ANYTHING just to figure it out (we had to storyboard scenes we were doing for our film and TV unit -- and I came back with a 20 shot thing after noodling on it for 30 minutes at lunch, and everyone else had a page and a half maybe (so 4 or 5 shots) and looked at me like I had three heads). But a director has to be good, really good, at a hell of a lot more than just making the story work.
The way I figure it, in addition to knowing how to tell the story and getting all the moving parts of a production working together to tell a story, a director has to really get other people and get what they need to give what the director needs fast. That means, among other things, having a political mind and a careful tongue. Add to this the need to be a good listener while being decisive enough to inspire confidence, and those are some serious people skills you need, not just as a side note to the artistic skills, but very possibly as the centerpiece to those artistic skills.
I could say that directing a show is like herding cats, but it's not really, even if yes, sometimes it can feel that way, especially when you've just been asked about ten questions more than you feel you have the capacity for about three days later than you had planned for those issues to come up. But if I said that directing a show is like herding cats, then we might all get the impression that being a taskmaster with a brain larger than a walnut is about the only requirement for the job, which it's really, really not.
And we'd also miss out on talking about stuff like Pygmalion and uncomfortable BDSM allegories. It's the sort of topic I could, or should, feel guilty about. Except for the thing where on the list of places I'm speaking from, ignorance isn't really one of them. I've been the awkward girl with the poor speech who doesn't know her table service; I've been the sub who didn't understand the purpose of her tasks (often because they didn't have one, which is a problem, at least in my conception of the world, YMMV as we all do this stuff for different reasons); and I've been the actor who knew shit wasn't quite clicking and it was my job to fix it, if only someone would help show me the way to how. And I have, in each of those scenarios, been the recipient of everything from profound grace that has made me a finer thing to a certain cruel indifference.
I've also, thankfully, had the privilege of watching people who are really good at their craft direct. The time I spent at rehearsals of The Three Furies didn't just make me a better artist, it made me a better person. That show, which included heightened reality and queer and kink themes while also being about people who have actually existed, was a brutal thing on its cast and presented a rawness and truth about identity, sexuality and being the muse on stage that was blindingly uncomfortable and probably exactly what I needed on my little Australian adventure. If I hadn't already started cluing into the responsibility a director has for and to his actors, let me tell you, it would have slapped me across the face right then and there. It was a privilege to be in the room. No one had to let me witness that process or speak to it. Many a reasonable person wouldn't have.
My point is, that while blocking and lights and costumes and what you're trying to illustrate out of a text are all vitally important, is that actors aren't chess pieces and they don't all function the same, and they are often going to need very different things from each other and from their director. And if you're the director? You better figure out what those things are as fast as you fucking can, and then wait thirty seconds before opening your damn mouth. Decisiveness is important. So is double-checking your work.
None of this necessarily came particularly naturally to me. I'm a fantastic read of people, and giving people what they need, and steering people to what they can be are huge turn-ons for me emotionally and intellectually. But I am impatient. I do get tired out by people, not because I don't love them and aren't fascinated by them, but because I'm just wired that way.
And I've had to learn, completely inorganically, how to have authority and how to be decisive. Horseback riding helped with that a lot. So has flying a plane. And fencing. Although each one has also made me see how much more work I have to do, not because I'm also an actor and not because of how I sometimes like to fuck, but because as an awkward girl-child in a very peculiar and old-fashioned environment I wasn't raised into these skills. It's not that I'm working without a net -- it's that unless I scrapbook one together, I am working without a map.
I talk, often, about wanting to be a finer thing. It comes from dance. From hands that lifted my chin, turned my wrist, and corrected my spine. I had a childhood of being mastered and molded in front of a mirror. Every day I saw what others saw when I was deemed worthy of correction. I was entranced, not with the way my teachers looked at me, but the way I saw them look at me in the mirror. It was a story I never got less hungry for, and it's a way of holding myself I've never lost. The tilt of my chin and the movements of my wrists will always tell you how I feel. They will also always tell you how I've been taught.
Which is why as an adult, I've had so little patience for the people who would marvel at my supposed delicacy and take my wrists in their hands and move me around, to see if I worked like a doll. Not inanimate, not a doll, not a chess piece. Being an actor doesn't change that. The angle of the neck must not just indicate grief or pride or murder, but feel it.
I won't tell you what my specific goals are for working with actors in general, because the what often varies as much as the how. But I will tell you that with all the balls I have in the air when I'm directing (and also often having to be an engine of Making Things Happen on a more production-type front), that matters of command and control are never far from front of mind. But they're not, despite how my experiences both leading and being led have shaped me, first and foremost, about other people. They're about governing myself, and being my own master, who can afford to listen, decide, and take time to find the response that the show and the people making it most need.
The rest follows.
[ Dogboy & Justine is a story about power and responsibility and the sex work theme is just one of the ways we get to that aspect of the characters' journeys.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider contributing to Dogboy & Justine's fundraising drive on Kickstart.com. We need to receive at least $6,000 in pledges by December 21st in order to receive funding. As of this writing, we're 52% of the way there. You can help by contributing money, boosting the signal, or just hanging out here and joining the conversation. Thanks for reading! ]
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-04 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-04 06:35 pm (UTC)Okay, I decided in the end to direct my reading myself, and reading this helped a lot, because even though it is a script in hand reading, it has a lot of banter and I'm thinking about how to get these things across.
The idea of having authority and taking it is really hard sometimes, and to both work with actors and be clear about what you/I want them to do is sometimes difficult. I know I've been socialized to not take charge, so it is hard for me to step up and do it.
I love the dance metaphor, and completely agree with that. (Miss dancing. Miss ballet and barre work, even though I sucked.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-04 06:54 pm (UTC)No, not like that.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-05 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-04 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-04 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-04 08:29 pm (UTC)I've also performed in my third Gilbert and Sullivan production. I have to say, I learned some from from observing the directors I've worked. None of this has really clued me in to what directing is or if I can even call anything I've done directing. But I am curious to learn more about it so that I can be better at both helping with the musical and performing.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-06 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-06 09:37 am (UTC)I realize that some very talented directors just can't do communication and people and really, really need to rely on a good SM to translate, but the people who just sort of intentionally cultivate this removed presence as a director? Not helpful. Like there is a necessary remove, to retain authority and to set yourself up as someone the actors want to please and because you're juggling a lot of shit. But despite being someone who spends a lot of time being all "being an artist is a burden *whine* *whine* *whine*" for fuck's sake, it's my burden, not that of my actors or my crew.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-08 03:27 am (UTC)I just sent him an email asking where to find information on what he's doing these days, because I miss his work. Many of the student actors and actresses at UMBC hated his guts, because he was tough. But once they got through one show with him as the director they were almost unanimously in love with his style. A few of the higher strung students changed majors or changed schools, but the percentage was minimal, and those who stayed got amazing training and left with skills far beyond their years.