Due to my recent theatrical experiences and some conversations I've had, I have been musing on what it is to direct a show. Despite all the stress and the enormity of the undertaking, I really enjoyed actually putting together the play, and I think I had some aptitude for it. I certainly learned a lot, and I have come to some conclusions as to what makes a good director.
I have a couple of rules as a director that I settled on based on my experience of director-actor interaction, not just involving myself, but what I have observed of others in that situation as well. The major one for me is that a director tells an actor what to do, not how to do it. The director has to describe what they want the action or the final effect is supposed to be, and the actor is supposed to figure out the way to achieve that. To take away that freedom to interpret, I feel, is to devalue and take agency from the actor. Of course there can be some debate as to whether the actor has legitimately interpreted the instruction, especially if the director does not feel it achieves the desired effect, but the contribution of an actor to a play is not being the puppet through which the director speaks. This ties in to another of my rules, to never ask the actor to imitate you. This I avoided at all costs. I think it's extremely disrespectful to the actor to take away their personal interpretation of your direction by making them basically do what you would do if you were the actor, whether it's a physical action or a way of reading a line. It pisses me off as an actor when this happens to me, so I never want to do it to anyone in a show of mine.
I was a very micromanaging director, I freely admit that. I gave very detailed instruction on pretty much every small aspect of blocking. However, I feel I balanced this level of, well, bossiness, with being completely willing to hear suggestions from the actors and try to come up with something different if something I told them didn't feel right to them. Jared had serious problems with some aspects of my original plan for the final scene of Hamlet, and the scene was very much improved when we addressed them and changed things to make things feel more playable to him. This is the kind of director I personally feel like I do the best work with, and I feel I do the best work as a director in this way.
I think I learned a lot about how to direct by being an actor. It's purely an experiential thing. You learn in the course of being in plays so many things about how a theatrical production should work-- how rehearsals are run, the conventions of stage composition, what sort of direction actors respond best to, all sorts of things like that. You learn what makes a good show in the course of being in shows and seeing what works and what doesn't. Having never really been in any theatrical context besides actor, I don't know what it would be like to enter direction from, say, a techie's perspective, but I know I learned so much about what to do with directing based on being an actor.
Of course, it may be my particular status as an actor that helped me. One thing Frances told me once was that when she was directing, a lot of the time her first instinct was to block scenes and give instructions based on what she would do if it were her playing the role. She found this often did not work because the actor she was giving direction to was not her and did not have the same capabilities as she did, whether it meant their strengths lay in other places, or if it meant they just weren't as strong. Jared also has a knack for figuring out what a performance needs or is missing, but his way of achieving it doesn't necessarily work for actors who don't have his talent.
But Frances and Jared are great actors. I, by contrast, am a good actor, not a great one. And I think that gives me an edge as a director. I am skilled enough that I understand the techniques of giving a good portrayal on the stage, but because I'm not so talented that I don't know how less gifted people have to work. There's a lot of "great athletics make lousy coaches" at work there. I think a great actor has a harder time helping others because they understand acting in terms of drawing on their deeper abilities, and it's hard to figure out how others who don't have those same abilities work.
I am beginning to suspect I may be better suited to directing than acting, and have more potential to be great there.
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