The Art of a Director

I think personal opinion will play a big part in this and hopefully you will get a range of good, intelligent replies. These are my thoughts...

* what do they do (besides the obvious) ?

They are the one's who have the overall vision, like a foreman on a building site, who coordinates all his resources (actors, crew, hardware) to make imagination become reality. They are the point where all aspects of a play meet - the writing, performance, set design and technical aspects. The Pivot Point if you like.

* how do they bring the play to life (rehearsal techniques, blocking)?

By co-ordinating resources negotiating between desire and reality. They provide their external POV to help map out, in both a real and metaphoric sense, the flow and movement of a production. What techniques they bring to this is often a matter of determining what is best for the script, cast members and the desired outcome combined.

For a script with a large cast, breaking down the acts into smaller bit sized chunks can help actors focus on specific elements, and these can be scheduled in such a way so that during the earlier period of rehearsal actors are not sitting around for too long waiting for their turn. On the other hand, a script with a few cast members and large blocks of dialogue may suffer from this approach.

As for things like blocking, well I like to take an 'organic' approach. Dependant on the script of course, there are often key moments where a specific blocking may be required with periods between which could be considered 'grey.' I think it is important that most blocking should feel natural and therefore (as a Director) I have worked with individual cast members to 'map' out movements while still allowing room for flexability, just in case things  'go-wrong.'

There are some "basic rules" which I always apply which include things like;

• never turn your back on the audience
• not blocking a fellow cast member
• and so forth - but every rule is made to be broken so,
• break a rule only when it needs to be broken.
  

* what makes a good director ?

Good communication and negotiation, strong leadership, a clear vision yet is flexible - everything in moderation

* what makes a bad director ?

Too much of one thing, not enough of another.

* horror stories ?

A few - I'll not go into details though.

* are they an everyman ?

A little knowledge about many if not all aspects helps, anything more than that is a bonus.

* what is your method of direction ?

Read all above... ;-)

Absit invidia (and DFT :nono:)

Jeff Watkins

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