8 Things Theatre People Get Wrong About Directing
(Listen to the podcast recording of this post HERE.)
Pardon the clickbait, it’s basically a requirement nowadays. It’s not entirely clickbait, I am actually going to give you what the title promises, but of course it’s a generalization; there are lots of folks who think about directing in more helpful ways. But my argument is that pretty much everything we have established in this field serves to reinforce unhelpful and often harmful idea about the role of a director in a theatrical production. (I’m not a film director, so I can’t be certain that the same things apply, but I’d be willing to bet that they do) These unhelpful and often harmful basic assumptions are severely hampering the work that we are doing in the theatre. And it’s not just directors that need to reevaluate how we see our work, artists in other disciplines need to reevaluate how they view the field of directing as well, because change will not happen unless there is widespread demand for change.
So, without further ado, here are the 8 things theatre people get wrong about directing:
Directing has no inherent authority. The authority of the director comes entirely from the people they are serving in that role. Even in commercial contexts, when the director is hired by a producer, that still does not bring with it any inherent authority apart from that which is given to them by those they are leading. The state of “being a director” does not magically make that person more intelligent, creative, authoritative, or anything else. It is just one role on a team of people filling roles that are just as crucial. I’ve self-directed work before, both solo work and a production of Venus in Fur with the incomparable Amy Guerin where neither of us and both of us were directing AND we were performing at the same time. It’s 100% possible to create dynamite work without someone filling the discreet role of “director” in a production. It’s not necessarily always viable or easy, but it’s possible. There is no inherent authority in directing.
Directing is a service. The tropes abound here. We’ve all seen the films and television, and even plays (Noises Off, anyone?) that have the eccentric, authoritarian director. So many of us started out in small community or educational theatres with directors who were led to believe that directing meant that they had the vision and everyone else was serving their vision. This is a dangerous lie. Maybe not an intentional one, but one that is perpetuated regularly in theatrical criticism, undergraduate and graduate instruction, and pretty much every theatre I’ve ever come across. Even directors who don’t actually mean it use it as a trope. I’ve had directors say things like “This is not a democracy,” or “Actors are just bio-props,” and while they often present it as a jest, the fact that it’s a trope to joke about demonstrates how deeply ingrained these ideas are in our field. Ultimately, directing is a service. As directors, we serve the playwright by helping realize their vision, we serve designers by working with them to create a framework on which they can hang their creations (or in design-as-performance work, invite them to be the genesis of the work itself), we serve actors by helping them craft individual and interconnected performances that they can be proud of, and on and on.
Directing does not require “artistic vision.” This is the first one that I’m probably going to get a lot of pushback on, but I’ll tell you how I know it’s true: because I’ve experienced it myself. I have absolutely walked into a production meeting or rehearsal and said to my team “I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to approach this, but I know it’s important that we tell this story.” The idea that the director has to have it all figured out and know exactly what they want from every single member of the team is poisoning the pool of potential directors. There are way too many artists who could helm incredible work as a director, but feel like they have to have it all figured out in order to direct it. Now, yes, effective directors have artistic taste that allows them to connect with how an audience will experience the work and identify areas for improvement, but taste and vision are not the same thing. Some of the best directors I’ve worked with as an actor are able and willing to freely admit when they are struggling with something or don’t know how to approach part or all of a piece of work. Even more importantly, the definition of what counts as “an artistic vision” depends entirely on who is asking about it and whether they agree. There are plenty of white, cisgender, male directors throughout history that talk down about work created in any way that offends their sensibilities and the power structure therein. So tying the role of a director to the idea of having “artistic vision” can serve to keep out those who we most need in the role of the director. That said, can having an “artistic vision” help? It absolutely can. Is it an essential part of directing? Not necessarily.
Directing is about observation, not control. The compliments I receive as a director that are the most meaningful to me artistically are the times when I am told things like “you find the heart of the thing” or “you see things so effectively.” The role of a director is to be the observer, the set of eyes standing in for the audience, taking in the whole of the work and identifying where things can be improved to make the story you and your team are telling together really come to life. My job is not to grab the rudder and steer the ship where I think it needs to go, because a theatrical production isn’t just one big boat, it’s a fleet of them, each helmed by a different artist. Effective directors can’t behave as though they are Captains of any individual ship, rushing into grab the helm and “fix things,” but rather Admirals, working to get the entire fleet on the same page and heading in the same direction. I am at my most effective as a director when my team trusts my observation skills, not when I try to control them or the project.
Directing is about communication, not “direction.” With the exception of safety issues (psychological as well as physical), I have never seen a director “direct” someone to do something (e.g. “You will do it exactly this way”) and it end well. It doesn’t always end poorly, but at most it ends in a shadow of how it could have ended. Effective directors don’t use imperatives, they use interrogatives; they ask questions. A story: I was working on a play with an actor I admire and we were discussing their character’s “want” within the scene. I had a particular picture in my head of which “want” I thought would be most helpful, but through my questions it became clear that the actor disagreed with me and had a very different idea about the scene that I hadn’t really considered. Now, did my experience tell me that it probably wasn’t going to ultimately be helpful? Absolutely. Did I want in that moment to offer that perspective to the actor? Absolutely. But through our communication, it was clear that this actor connected with their perspective more than with mine, which is completely understandable, we all connect to things differently. So I said okay, let’s try it your way. When I tell you that I watched that actor transform in front of my eyes…it made me question everything I thought I knew about the play and the character in some ways. It was clear in that moment that I wasn’t necessarily “wrong” in my approach, but neither was my vision for that character as helpful to the actor (and thus to the production) as theirs was. They just hadn’t figured out how to express it up until that point. That day prompted revisiting multiple other scenes and rebuilding elements of their character arc (and thus the arcs of other characters) to be more effective, and I would never have understood or appreciated the character in that way if I had been set on “directing” them to do it the way I wanted them to.
Directing is about identifying and fostering potential. Directors are gatekeepers, there’s no two ways about it. Who we choose to cast and hire on a production, who we advocate for to producers and donors, the type of work we choose to work on; we hold a lot of power in the theatre. The only way we can really reduce that is by increasing the number of trained, effective directors, so that there are more of us to be drawn to more varied types of work so that there is less power in the choices we make. But for now, our choices hold power, and if we’re serious about this field, we have to hold each other accountable for making choices that don’t exercise that power effectively. This means that we have to get good at seeing potential in stories, people, and ideas, not just looking for the things that are already polished. Often, the most “polished” performers are those that have access to resources that are not available to just anyone. Could their parents afford to hire an acting coach or a voice coach? What about paying for expensive classes? Do they have to work three jobs to support themselves while also auditioning and trying to improve their skills? In order to get good at being able to spot and foster potential, we have a lot to learn from teachers. I’ve long said that the best directors I know are also the best teachers, because good teachers are excellent at this. Does this mean you can’t ever cast the polished actor in the lead role? Not at all. Does it mean that we need to actively be holding ourselves and our colleagues accountable to challenge the idea of “type”, as one example? Absolutely. We can convince an audience to accept that we’re in a park with a two chairs on a stage as a park bench and some sound effects, the era of beliefs like “nobody will believe the larger-bodied person as the ingenue” is long gone and needs to die a quiet death. Which leads us to…
Directing is about balancing advocacy. This is the core of the “paradigm manifesto” that this blog aims to provide. We are all constantly advocating for something or someone; just like characters in plays we might direct, we have objectives and wants and tactics. We can advocate for ourselves, we can advocate for others and with others, we can advocate for change or the status quo, we can advocate politically and socially, we can advocate in a multitude of ways for a multitude of things. Directing, when it is done well, is ultimately about balancing that advocacy. The most effective directors are ones who understand their role as primarily that of an advocate, which means that they pay close attention to power dynamics, who is being listened to or not and heard or not, who is being given room to contribute and who is not, and at the same time remembering to advocate for themselves and their own perspective as well. If this seems a bit hard to grasp, don’t worry, we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about this on this blog.
Directing is broken. The field of directing is broken. Directing has no clear training path, no clear growth path. Actors can audition to become parts of other work; directors have no equivalent. Most either luck into the role, bully or badger their way into the role, or assign themselves the role through self-producing work. There is little-to-no oversight of directors at any level of the field. Some might argue that this is changing somewhat more now in the wake of the Me Too movement and the explosion of the field of intimacy direction, but stories out of major productions like Hamilton tell us that the change is far too slow. There are precious few directing classes offered to community theatre directors or even theatre educators. Undergraduate theatre programs may offer a directing class or two (yes, there are always exceptions, some programs are stronger than others). Regardless, the small number of training options there are offer few to no opportunities for learners to receive appropriate and necessary feedback on their work as a director as a leader, not just artistically. We have a leadership crisis in theatre in the same way we have a leadership crisis in corporate culture: for decades, maybe even centuries, people have been given positions as directors and artistic directors because of their artistic abilities and not because of their leadership capabilities. We teach actors to accept abuse in the name of “artistic vision.” We allow lines to be blurred because it might interfere with the “artistic vision.” Institutions hold onto toxic, abusive directors and artistic directors because there is no clear pathway to train more of them! The system perpetuates itself because it is not designed with the wellbeing of those it works with in mind. There is no capitalistic impetus for those who have “made it” to try to open the floodgates and train community theatre directors in small towns all over the country, because it puts their status at risk. Because when anyone who really wants to can learn how to direct, then maybe we realize that some of those people currently “at the top of the field” aren’t actually all they’re cracked up to be…they just got there because we let them.
We have to stand up and reclaim the healthy role of directing in American theatre, because it will only change when enough people demand it. But the system punishes those who stand up and fight most of the time, because it still gives power to the people that shouldn’t have it.
So. We’re going to take it apart, brick by brick, deconstructing the field of directing and rebuild it better. I hope you’ll join me on this journey.