Category Archives: directing

Canada, directing, quotes, TV

Outrageous Fortune

Having just watched all of Season One, I’m going to take a drastic step – I’m going to put SLINGS AND ARROWS director Darren Nichols (Don McKellar)on my resume as one of my references.

Darren: I’m used to being hated. That’s my thing. But I can’t function as a director unless that hatred is kept in check by a thin, calculated veneer of invulnerability.

They really understand him in Germany, of course.

I loved him playing with the little plastic horse while he was reading the script, too – and the roll-up Bosch poster that he carried with him. There’s a very fine line between him and me. You could almost call it a thin, calculated veneer.

PS. Don McKellar also co-wrote the book for The Drowsy Chaperone, with Bob Martin (one of the Slings & Arrows writers, too)

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books, directing

Brrrrrrontes

Read Villette yesterday, at the rec of Christopher at Bloomsbury. Pretty depressing, Charlotte.

Jemal MacNeil and I are putting in a co-directing pitch for EYE MOUTH GRAFFITI BODYSHOP – I’m inspired partly in this by Bill and Tracy’s work on MMC, but party just by trusting Jemal as a collaborator. I think our ideas together are already better than what I ever could have come up with on my own.

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directing, the chorus, theater

Wishlist 2007

Straw poll from NOTE is in and neither of the two plays I was most passionate about, CURRENT and EYE MOUTH, are in the lineup. Time to plan to do them elsewhere. I thought it’d be fun to start a list of the projects I really want to direct:

FLATLAND (and adapt)
EYE MOUTH GRAFFITI BODYSHOP by Ron Allen
CURRENT by Aaron Henne
UNTITLED W.H. AUDEN BALLAD PROJECT
“Victor was a little boy,
Into this world he came,
His father took him on his knee and said,
Don’t dishonor the family name…”
THE MISANTHROPE (re-translate)
THE WIZARD OF OZ (choral)
OEDIPUS (choral)
All the Greeks, but starting with this one.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
SOMETHING CLOUDY, SOMETHING CLEAR (All I do is rip off Ted)
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (And Jean-Marie Apostolides’ production of this was so amazing – I just love the play so much I’d be ready to go on that journey again…)
L’ILLUSION COMIQUE
THE PHILANDERER
THE REAL THING (for old times’ sake…Elizabeth, Fran, & Gary…)
SUNDIATA PROJECT
BEOWULF (so long in the making, and pre-empted by Taymor, but hell…)
GILGAMESH (Dan and Cindy kind of have a jump on this one)
HAMLET
THE COUNTRY WIFE (very high on the list)
THE SEAGULL (Am I finally growing up into Chekhov?)

I think this is going to have to migrate into a wishlist page.

I don’t know why I’m so damn excited about a choral Oz all of a sudden, except that I always think of that “Follow the yellow brick road…” stychomythia as the perfect example of erfroren – gestaffelt – zusammen development (and I think that means frozen – staggered – together, but obviously, my German’s not what it was and it was never much!)

Follow the yellow brick road…A choral Oz with a cast of like fifty. Obviously in the reality of unemployment, my dreams are as big as they can get.

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directing, tartuffe, theater

It’s Never Too Late…

to get out of rehearsal two hours early.

The last director I was working with never would have ended a rehearsal so early, especially not the one before second preview. Which may have been good, and may have been bad.

Our preview last night relaxed the entire group, if only because Moliere saved us. His unornamented speeches, unadorned by any production conceits, were what got the biggest reactions. Dorine talking about horny angry old women, Tartuffe’s pious lust and Jansenist seduction…”Hardly anything’s taboo…” were most successful.

So I guess I can’t blame us for ending early. With a play like this…
“With us, Madame, you can’t go wrong.”
you’re almost guaranteed success.

Notes session was much less acrimonious. Sense of relief.
Because a) the preview was good,
and b) we typed out the notes so people could glance at them as we went through them – so no one was surprised verbally and felt defensive.

This director gives everyone everybody’s notes. Interesting.

Actor: I fucked up my monologue.
Director: To your credit, we’ve never worked it in the hall – I think it’s time.

We are so underrehearsed from a text point of view.

Director: I don’t know if it makes a lot of sense from the inside, but from the outside it looks just fine.

Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l’offense.
It’s scandal that creates the sin.
If there’s no scandal, there’s no sin.
If there’s no sandal, there’s no skin…

We end early, having again polished Tartuffe-Elmire to perfection, given short shrift to Valere-Mariane, and for my money there are still huge pace problems in the first act.

But the director is a more relaxed artist than I am, and I think he may have something to teach me. The actors were so happy to get out early. I wonder if I don’t trust plays enough. He certainly has a great degree of trust in this one.

The stage manager told me that pace problems would iron out over the first two weeks of the run. It’s so strange working here, when you feel like throwing away the first 2 weeks. Anywhere else, that’s half your run, if you’re lucky.

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directing, OSF, tartuffe, theater

From the Rehearsal-Before-First-Preview-Dept.

Director: The fourth wall is a very tender membrane, and if you punch through it too abruptly, it’s not going to feel good from the other side.

Lazzi #784: Pulling on someone’s cape string makes them burp. Doesn’t make it into the production, but it has a remarkable tenacity in my head. This and the banana.

Dramaturg: This is the big entrance.
Actor: Just from an actor’s point of view, it doesn’t help to know that this is the big entrance. All I can do is walk on stage. That’s all I signed up to do.

Discussion about if Tartuffe sees Dorine at his entrance, and if so, how he reacts. Moliere has “apercevant Dorine.” We’re trying to get a window into his pre-seeing-Dorine psyche.

Lots of talk about what Moliere would have done.

A: We’re getting Stanley dressed.
B: You’re giving Stanley a rest?
A: We’re getting Stanley dressed.
C: Stanley’s under arrest?

It’s never too late (although this is rather eleventh-hour) to discover word choices, weights, motivations…

Who will believe thee, Isabelle?

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