[This
is the final section of Kirk’s “Reflections On Directing,” “Tech.” I trust readers have found the advice useful
and edifying, and if you have, please pass the post along to anyone who’s just
starting out as a director or who’s curious about how the job works within a
production.]
TECHNICAL ISSUES
In
this series of articles on directing, we’ve been looking at the various issues
a director faces while staging a play. This particular article focuses on some
very particular directing techniques. It may not have general interest. On the
other hand, it may be interesting to non-directors as an illustration of what
can be involved in directing.
Know when the actors
should move
Suppose
that, for some or for all of the play, you as the director are going to stage
it in the traditional way – by working out your blocking in advance and giving
it to the actors in “blocking rehearsals.”
So
you cut out your little pieces of paper with the characters’ names on them, you
tape them on coins or chess pieces or whatever you use, and you set them on a
diagram of the stage. You’re ready to figure out the actors’ movements.
When
should they move?
Directing
books tend to give answers that amount to, “The actors should move when their
characters are motivated to move.” This answer never satisfied me. I was sure
there was some more fundamental principle behind the question of actor
movement, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I
found the answer in a book called Thinking
Like a Director by Michael Bloom. I have met Mr. Bloom once, and if I ever
meet him again I will have a lot to thank him for, because he gives exactly the
right answer. Here it is:
Regardless of a play’s style, one way to
ensure that the staging reinforces the action (unless there is a special reason
to contradict it) is to punctuate each new beat with business, activity, or
movement. (p 143)
Thank
you, sir. I am forever grateful.
You
probably know, or if not you should, that in standard American practice, the
director (and the actor) divides a play into “beats,” small sections, usually a
few lines long.
The
word “beat” is said to have come from the wave of Russian directors in the
early Twentieth Century, who were saying the word “bit” in heavily accented
English.
Whether
that’s so or not, the idea is to divide the play into small sections (bits, now
“beats”) that begin and end when a change occurs in the flow of the play – an
entrance or an exit, a new thought, a new topic, a new strategy on the part of
one of the characters . . . anything that changes the way the play is going.
The
director or actor draws a horizontal line across the page where one of these
changes takes place, and another horizontal line at the next change. The
section of the play between those two lines is a beat.
Unless
there is some reason not to, make some business or movement happen when the beat changes.
There
is no science to this; it’s an art, and depends on your taste and judgment.
People may argue about where a beat begins or ends. It doesn’t matter; you’re
the director, and the definition of beats only needs to be useful to you.
As
for the choice of activities, the decision on what happens at those places,
those like every other decision are a matter of your talent and ability. No need
to second-guess yourself – make the best decisions you can, and see how they
work out when actors put them on their feet.
Paraphrase
Paraphrase
is having the actors say their lines using their own words, rather than the
words in the script, as part of the rehearsal process. This may not sound like
a sensible approach. We want the actors to learn their lines correctly, don’t
we? How does it help to encourage them to use their own words? Aren’t they
doing that enough anyway?
Maybe
so. You want to use this tool carefully. But used in the right way, it can be
useful.
I
always, without exception, use paraphrase early in rehearsals when doing a play
by Shakespeare. In order to paraphrase Shakespeare, you have to know what he’s
saying. This may sound obvious, but I’ve seen plenty of Shakespeare spoken where
the actors literally had no idea what many of the words meant.
Paraphrase
is also useful when a scene is jammed, when it just won’t work no matter what.
The problem is that the farther along the play is in the rehearsal period, the
more difficult it is for the actors to get away from the words they’ve already
learned.
If
the actors are too wedded to their lines to paraphrase effectively, you may
want to design a slightly different scene that works the same way
as the scene in the play – a similar situation, but not the identical one. In
other words, actually, an improvisation.
Improvisation
Improvisation
– basically, making up scenes from scratch – has become associated with comedy.
As a result, many actors see it as an instruction, or an invitation, to show
off. And there’s a related problem –
Many
actors hate improvisation, especially
during rehearsals.
For
these reasons, directors have to be extremely careful about how they use
improvisation.
Years
ago, in a production of Promises,
Promises, Dan Brambilla, a fine director, used improvisation with as much
caution as I can imagine anyone using.
He
explained to the cast his trepidation about the technique; he dimmed the lights
so they were almost out; he had the two actors involved (I was one) sit and
just talk to each other; and he defined the situations of the improvisations so
closely that they were extraordinarily easy to accomplish. I remember that he
had us talk quietly about our hopes (as characters) for the future.
There
was something funny about how protective Dan was toward his actors (and he knew
it), but he was right. He set limited
goals for the improvisations, based on specific needs he saw in the play. He
made them easy for the actors to achieve, and he limited the improvisation to
those results.
In
summary, don’t use improvisation unless you need it; if you do need it, think
hard about the best way to do it.
A
useful technique for starting an improvisation with beginning actors (borrowed
from creative dramatics) is to have the actors arrange themselves in a “still
picture” of the opening moment of the scene. They arrange themselves as though
they were a photograph of that moment
The
director says, “Ready, FREEZE” and the actors are motionless. Then the director
tells the actors, “When I give the signal, continue the scene until I stop.”
The signal can be clapping, rapping a pencil on a chair . . . some easy to hear
sound.
This
and similar techniques are probably unnecessary with more practiced performers.
However,
just because they’re more practiced, they may not want to do improvisations at
all. A director should use improvisation only when it’ll help.
“Crazy” rehearsals
Basically,
at a certain point in rehearsals the director may feel that the work isn’t
advancing. The actors are feeling stale, they’re bored, they’re not listening
to each other. It’s time, maybe, for a crazy rehearsal.
There
are many kinds of crazy rehearsal, and you want to pick the kind (or kinds)
that will get the results you want. Some are specifically aimed at increasing
the actors’ understanding of the relationships in the scene.
Some
are designed to help the actors physicalize what’s happening in the play. Some
are just, well, crazy, and, one hopes, fun.
Use the lines from
the play,
but there’s no need to use one of these crazy rehearsal ideas for a whole
rehearsal. You can apply them to a scene or even a beat.
So,
short or long, here are some ideas, and there are plenty of others.
Have
the actors:
- Touch the person they’re talking to, in a way appropriate to the line, at least one touch for each line.
- Verbalize what they as the character want, just before they say each line of the play.
- Sing the lines.
- Do the lines very slow, as though in a film that’s been slowed down.
- Do the lines very fast, as though in an old comic film.
- Do the scene in mime, imagining that the entire audience is hearing-impaired
- Whisper the lines, or speak them as though afraid of being overheard.
- Do the lines at the farthest possible physical distance from each other.
- Do a scene to music you play to create a mood
- Reverse the characters – playing each other’s roles
- Do the lines in different general styles – melodrama, farce, etc.
- Breathe – inhale and exhale – before each line.
- Do the lines sitting back to back.
- Do the lines as different kinds of animals.
- Narrate what they’re going to do, just before they do it – for example, “Now I’m going to scare the life out of you!”
- Do the scene in the dark.
When
used at the right time, crazy rehearsal ideas can lead to increased
physicality, more solid interrelationships, and new understanding of the
scenes. They can also reduce tension and help remind the actors that a play is play.
Alert the actors
Alert
them of what?
There
are certain things a director knows, that actors may forget. For example:
- Alert them when a rehearsal is going to be bad.
The
first time memorized lines are due, the first time with lights, the first time
with costumes, the first time with an audience . . . every one of those “firsts”
will send shocks into the subconscious of the actors, alarming them and
throwing them off their game. Anything new will.
- Alert them in advance. Tell them that you don’t expect full-out acting at this particular rehearsal – that you just want them to adjust to the new circumstance, whatever it is. (If you give them this permission, the right not to act 100%, they will in fact perform better than they would otherwise, since they know they won’t be judged.)
If the play is a comedy, alert
them, unless they’re very experienced, about the way to handle laughs –
waiting until the laughs have crested and are just starting to die, then
coming in with the next line.
This
advice becomes second nature (as much as anything about comedy ever can) to
actors who’ve worked with it a while. If they haven’t, they need the advice or
they’ll start their lines that follow laughs either too late or too early,
leading to the laughs stopping altogether.
Alert actors in a comedy, if
necessary, that laughs will seldom come in the exact same place or at the
same strength in two different performances. The cast must not count on
the identical reaction each performance, because that won’t happen.
- Alert them also that an audience that laughs loudly may actually dislike the show, but that a silent audience may think it’s wonderful. The cast’s job isn’t to guess “how it’s going,” but to do the play they’ve rehearsed.
- Alert a cast that complains about a particular audience that the audience paid its money and doesn’t owe the cast anything. We’re entertaining them; they have no obligation to entertain us.
-
Alert
your actors that they ought to read their scripts once every day, as long as they’re part of the play! Yes, every single
day, even after they have their lines down cold.
- And
alert the actors not to let their own assessments of their performances guide
them.
If
a director’s job is to be a helper – and it is – then helping the actors by
reminding them now and then of the results of experience is a valuable thing to
do.
[In the longer version of “Reflections On Directing" he called “The
Director’s Book of Weird Ideas,” Kirk
included a list of “highly recommended books on or related to directing:” I’m appending these references here, with Kirk’s annotations on the books’
usefulness and benefits; I may also add one or two titles of my own.
· Bloom, Michael. Thinking
Like a Director. Faber and Faber, Inc.,
New York. 2001. Calm, practical. A book that lives up to its title. Any
director will find many useful things in it; the beginning director will find
both knowledge and reassurance.
· Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht
on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic.
John Willett, editor. Hill and Wang, New York, 1977. Heady stuff for a
director. Brecht’s ideas on theater, like Brecht himself, are slippery,
contentious, sometimes devious, and hard to pin down, but the director who spends
some time with them will at a minimum feel a new sense of purpose, even if it’s
not necessarily the purpose Brecht has in mind.
· Brook, Peter. The
Empty Space: A Book About the Theater: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate. Touchstone, 1995. A book that has opened
doors for many directors since it was first published in 1968. Brook’s vision
of theater goes back to the basics, tearing down many obstacles in the process,
and starts to build it back up again – as he has also done in his productions.
· Clurman, Harold. On
Directing. Touchstone, 1997. Harold
Clurman was a charming and fascinating person and his book is charming and
fascinating, but it’s also practical, an exposition of the best of standard
American directing practice.
· Grotowski, Jerzy and Barba, Eugenio (ed.). Towards a
Poor Theatre. Theatre Arts, 2002. Like
Peter Brook’s book, this collection was first published in 1968, and like
Brook’s book, it led directors across the world to rethink their principles and
the ways they were working. It still can.
· Shaw, George Bernard. Shaw
on Theatre. E.J. West, editor. Hill and
Wang, New York, 1967. This collection would be invaluable if it only included
“The Art of Rehearsal,” a letter Shaw wrote to a friend who asked him how to
direct a play. Shaw told him, giving advice that may sound old-style but is
smart and tough. Shaw knew theater inside and out, and everything he writes
about it is worthwhile.
· Spolin, Viola. Improvisation
for the Theater. Northwestern University
Press, 1999. For many the Holy Grail of books about theater improvisation, and
a source of exercise after exercise designed to build the participants’ skills
and their ability to perform. Spolin also provides solid instructions on how
these exercises are to be coached and led.
· Way, Brian. Development
Through Drama. Humanity Books, 1967. For
me, an eye-opener to the potential of creative dramatics, both as an activity
in itself and as an asset to theater. Brian Way was both a theater worker and
an educator, and this brilliant book is a bridge between the two.
[Kirk
added that there are numerous textbooks on directing on the market. “Rather
than survey the field,” he wrote, “here are two that I’ve found to be solid and
useful”:
- Hodge, Francis. Play Directing: Analysis, Communication, and Style. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1971.
- Vaughn, Stuart. Directing Plays: A Working Professional’s Method. Longman Publishing Group, White Plains, N.Y. 1993.]
[In
that longer version, Kirk recommends that directors take an acting class “to
know as much about how [actors] function as you can.” In that spirit, I strongly recommend that
incipient directors (as well as experienced ones and all other theater artists)
read Uta Hagen’s Respect for Acting (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
It’s the single best book on acting that I’ve read (though there are
lots of others by renowned actors and acting teachers, and sampling some by
Stella Adler, Sonia Moore, Robert Lewis, or Michael Chekhov—many of whom were
also directors themselves—can’t but help directors understand actors and acting
better). I have two copies of Respect because my first one got so thumb-smudged,
annotated, and high-lighted I couldn’t lend it out anymore. (I also have two copies of On Directing because my original one, with all its
marginal notes and comments, had been used so hard, it finally fell apart.)
[It
should go without saying, but probably won’t, that no theater artist should get
far into the profession without a familiarity with the ideas if Konstantin
Stanislavsky, the father of modern western acting. I’d start with his autobiography, My
Life in Art (Routledge, 2008), and then
delve into his so-called ABC’s: An
Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role (all Theatre Arts Books, 1989). (Jean Benedetti has published newer
translations than these original classic editions by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood;
the first two original volumes are combined into An Actor's Work, Routledge, 2008, and the third is retitled
An Actor's Work on a Role, Routledge,
2009. I’m familiar with the criticisms
of Reynolds’s mid-century renditions,
but I don’t know the Benedetti versions; Benedetti is, however, a
much-published authority on Stanislavsky and I have read others of his books
and translations.)]
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