Directing: Relationship, Craft, and Vision

In my senior year of high school, I was accepted to a prestigious theater conservatory – as a director. What a shock! I had auditioned in acting, and I had no idea why I would be accepted in the directing track instead. I ended up turning down the offer, but as I progressed through my artistic education, I realized that those professors actually knew what they were doing when they identified me as a director.

I know now that by nature, I am indeed more of a director and a writer than an actor. I like acting, and I still perform occasionally. But when I started directing in college with Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder, I found my real niche. I knew I had stumbled into something that was right for me.

Directing requires a number of skills, including education in all the other theatrical arts. If you haven’t had formal training in acting, such as the Meisner technique, improv, voice, and movement, it’s going to be really hard to talk to your actors effectively. Understanding how acting feels versus how it looks is a major part of being a successful director. And that usually requires knowledge of the craft of acting that you get through several years of training.

Many people think directing is about power, but those people don’t tend to make good theatrical directors. Directing is about relationship, trust, and work ethic. Theater is a collaborative art, and every person contributes creative ideas and talent. But the director is responsible for shaping the overall effect of the work. The cast has to trust the director, as the observer standing outside the scenes, to adjust things like pacing, staging, and the use of sound and silence for maximum effect.

The ethical director extends respect to the cast for their honest effort, the gift of their talent, and the tremendously hard work that is acting – if the actors are doing the work. But if actors don’t do even the basics (learning their lines!) despite adequate time and support, no good director will act as if that doesn’t matter. You can be polite while still making it clear that failing to learn the lines harms the show and lets down the rest of the team.

There are some cases in which actors actually can’t learn lines due to disabilities or age. And some actors have difficulty memorizing large parts, but can handle small ones. Whichever the case, the actor has a responsibility to know their limits and participate only in projects where they can handle the responsibilities of their part. Staged readings or improvs can be excellent for those who still want to perform but have true memorization disabilities.

The cast also has the right to expect professional behavior from the director.

What’s professional behavior from a director? Here are some of the things I strive to do.

• Embrace what actors bring to a project.
• Take care of actors emotionally in vulnerable moments (which you are only likely to know how to do after your own training in acting).
• Stay mindful of power dynamics: yes, you should give suggestions or instructions as a director, but you should do so as an equal, with warmth and humanity and without harshness or a superior tone.
• Affirm the good work actors do, and the strength and courage it takes to do that imaginative work.

Finally, I fully understand and accept my role as a director. I understand that I have a responsibility to the cast. A director is not just a “facilitator,” because that approach usually results in insufficient unity and quality for the work, especially with less-experienced actors. My job is to bring them all through a positive process to an opening night at which they can perform with confidence in their work and in each other. We should all be able to take pride in the outcome and in what we are giving to the audience. To accomplish this, a director must be a leader and maintain a vision, even as that vision includes the contributions of others.