The Why
(Listen to the podcast recording of this post HERE.)
Something is broken in the field of directing.
Almost everyone I meet in the theatre has a “bad director” story or two. The “geniuses” who got away with a lot of crap because they were artistic savants, or the ones who were not shy about it, but everyone was too scared to report it.
I wrapped a production of Macbeth recently here in Houston, and do you know how many of our actors have told me that their experience working on this show with my co-director and me has changed their lives or caused them to reevaluate their own worth in this process? I’m utterly thrilled to hear that, that’s exactly what I want to do for them, but it is far too many. And I hear things like that after every show I work on.
Why do I give a crap? Because theatre is truly my first love. We began courting at age 6 and by 8 we were married forever. Two memories dominate most others from my childhood, and they both involve theatre. First, sitting in the pews of First Friends Church in Colorado Springs, watching the annual Christmas musical and wondering when I will be old enough to join the youth group so that I can do what they’re doing. I remember mom telling me that I would be old enough when I was 6; just one more year!
The second is getting to go see the homeschool theatre company in Northern Virginia, Young People’s Theatre that got to perform in a real dinner theatre! I remember seeing Anne of Green Gables and the Hobbit before mom surprised me by telling me that they were holding auditions and I could audition! I learned so much with YPT over the years of being involved there.
My experiences with theatre in my youth were overall quite positive. I was lucky to be involved with organizations with reasonable expectations, strong educators, and very involved parents, and that is clearly not the case for a lot of people. Yet even still, I can point to things I learned and internalized as a young actor and eventual director that I have had to unlearn that we just aren’t talking about as a field.
I used to take it personally, when an actor who had worked with me on a production and had the experience of being valued and respected as a partner in the artistic process would go back to working in places where that was less true. I wanted to shake them by the shoulders and say “Hey, hold on there. You deserve better than this!” But the reality is that they don’t have a choice. That’s where the work is, and those who control access to the work often do not want to have to deal with people complaining about not having access to the work, so actors, designers, technicians, and even directors put up with a LOT of toxicity to enable them to keep working.
And there have been so many conversations happening about the necessary work in the theatre related to anti-racism, decolonization, and feminism. But those conversations seem to be missing an utterly crucial part of the issue: the complete lack of clear standards, expectations, or training surrounding the field of directing. Theatre directors are community leaders within artistic communities, whether they intend to be or not. They set the tone for the culture that will be built through the process of creation. The role is sacred, not because it touches on any particular religion, but because it is a conduit for connectedness. And in the wrong hands, that connectedness is poisoned, breeding gossip, zero-sum thinking, and ultimately emotional and even physical pain for everyone involved.
Yet, despite that incredibly essential role, there is no clear path for a director to undergo training and development outside of MFA programs. I’m sure that most folks who got their start at a community or youth theatre where a director was selected because they were willing or because they had the idea first, with little to no actual training provided or sought out. And you might be tempted to say, “But that’s just small community theatres,” yet I will point out that I know very few artists who haven’t had that experience or known someone who has had that experience. Small theatres like that are the entry point to the world of theatre for so many people, especially those who do not want to pursue it professionally but still love the form. Toxic directors who have poor leadership in that environment can poison an artist’s sense of confidence and diminish the quality of their storytelling from early in their development, making it immensely harder to unlearn those false truths, and robbing those artists and their communities of transformative storytelling.
As a director, I am regularly encountering and trying to create room for healing from trauma. Actors who are afraid to take up space when they’re not in character because they don’t want to get yelled at. Designers and stage managers who are scared to approach anyone about a gig because they have a disability that makes certain things more challenging for them. Writers sharing stories of aggravating things being said to or asked of them by directors directing a production of their play. I see and hear these stories and so many more, and the reality is that our rehearsal rooms and production meetings are connected. What you do in “your” rehearsal rooms and production meetings inevitably affects me in mine, and vice versa. Because unlike many other fields, the vast majority of theatre artists no longer work for just one company. So I have a personal stake in this, and whether you are a director, stage manager, actor, designer, technician, or audience member, you have a personal stake too.
Deconstructing Directing is my contribution to the larger conversation about the tectonic shifts that need to occur in theatre as soon as yesterday, and I’ll be publishing at least one post a week. Each post will be recorded and uploaded as a series of Tik Toks or a short podcast episode (and the podcast might have a few additional thoughts thrown in as they come to me), so you can engage with the content any of those ways. Not everything I share will be unique, and in fact part of my goal is to elevate the voices of those who are most harmed by the lack of training and leadership development for directors at every level of the field. I may be neurodivergent, queer, and non-binary, but I’m also white and assigned male at birth, so I have been doing and will continue to do a lot of listening to women, people of color, and other artists who share my identities but at different intersections.
I hope you’ll join me in this conversation.
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