Compiled February Notes

So I finally sat down and wrote a draft of my one act. Most of my work up until now has been more the working of conceptual ideas, nothing that resembled even close to a script. I'm proud of my work so far and really like the idea, but at the same time I'm very much prepared to have my one act denied; I'm not that particularly fantastic of a play write, nor do I think that I'm largely prolific either.

The good thing is that my infatuation has nothing to do with me wanting my one act to be something of my own creation, but more resides in a love of the idea. This is very beneficial for me because that fact has made it easier finding back up plays to put on should my idea be denied. So far I have come across two scripts. 1) A lovely adaptation of "The Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury. 2) Honeymoon  Motel by Woody Allen.

Note: always make sure to make to consult with actors about specific language and critique after a reading.

Read aloud Kara's One act. Reading with other shows the flaws in your script and language more clearly that reading yourself.

Be prepared to throw away your most favorite lines, phrases or characters; you might have to.
  "Be prepared to kill your baby"

Gib directed us today. Asked for a lot of improvisation, clear-ish direction and a lot of freedom. It worked for a while but then that freedom lead to it falling apart; some actors were in it less than others and goofed off in the moment.

New Postulate: Always make sure to mine your actors for ideas and thoughts on the scene. Give them freedom to make choices, BUT if you don't keep them in the seen and remain seriously invested in the game yourself, your actors will fall out of commitment easily.

"A director must remain just as much a part of the game as the actor".

Silent scene direction Exercise:
Sabina was my director, Nick and Kara were my fellow actors and we were putting on a scene where the tension was so high that words couldn't be said.

Drafting the scene and working through the creation process was fairly smooth. Lots of choices being made in the moment by both Nick and I in out dynamic as mother and father of Kara, who we recently discovered to be using hard drugs. Very profitable experience. With surprising minimal intervention by Sabina. She gave very brief notes after every time we ran the scene. Some positive, some critique. Nothing particular special.

Read my script aloud in class. Mixed reactions. Some people liked the flat and stale style, they felt it befitted the court case and felt that the play had a good premise. Others were a little more critical of the actual characters. "I don't like any of those characters, I am not rooting for them"-Kelly. Which is fair enough as I see it. None of the characters were designed to be particularly relatable or likable for that matter. If I had my way, not a single character would be "likable". Lucile is Lucifer = Antagonist. Joshua is Jesus, but I wrote him to be more of an incompetent lawyer than one who was effective  and then Bill is supposed to be the representation of humanty (selfish, jaded, a waffler, overeactive). None of these people are "likable", they aren't supposed to be; the entire point of the play resides on more of an issue of plot than one of character interaction. It's about the trial, it's outcome and how it got to that outcome, not the people.

Another silent scene exercise:
This time I was a director and both Conrad and Nick were my actors. Going in to this I thought it was going to somewhat smooth (given my last experience). I was wrong.


We started out smoothly, warming the actors up with Gib was a fairly enjoyable and well done (in my opinion) experience. Joel mentioned that we did a particularly good job of staying in the exercise with the actors.

Then we split up and Nick, Conrad and I started talking about the premise of the play and coming up with a concept (a brother getting another brother to sign away a fathers inheritance). Which they both seemed to like. Then, when we started playing, it got very hectic quickly. They continually fell out of the seriousness of the scene, as well as falling into completely stereotypical mafia setting. Nick even at one point got up and strangled Conrad, leaping over the table and screaming in the process I did my best to quell that but I quickly realized that I couldn't really escape that dynamic they had (they were good friends and quickly reached for opportunities to make each other laugh). So I decided to role with it. At one point Nick burned Conrad's arm as an escalation to the scene, afterword Conrad quickly broke and yelled "YOU SLUT!" So, I decided to make this intentional and I asked Nick to do that every time. Doing that made gave Nick and Conrad a good direction  At that moment I knew that it was time to move on to the ending. Unfortunately we ran  out of time that point and w had to present.

New Postulate: Do not pick best friends for a one act. Pick people who will build of each other, but not uncontrollably. Look for unique chemistry in the auditions (this means requiring a few paired scenes).

Joel read over my script and didn't think that the characters enough direction, which is fair enough. I agreed to either decide on a new one act or rewrite in such a way so that "the needs of the characters were more apparent". I considered it to be a fair assessment. He recommended I read "Words Words Words" and "The universal Language" by David Ives and loaned me a copy of a compilation with his work to browse through.

Rewriting the one  act was highly unsuccessful. It's just not there, my idea is standalone and changing it any such way to make the character's needs more apparent makes it either too long or makes the play into something I don't want to put on. On the flip side though I've completely fallen in love with "Words Words Words", so that will probably end up being my one act.

Notes on the Week 1/27-1/31

Notes

Even in the most ridiculous pieces of improve, there are treasures

Don’t discount unexpected things because there can DEFINITELY be things of merit in them

Be careful of doing the things to your actors that you do to yourself when acting (asking lofty questions and little direction)

-Do not overwhelm your actor

-Solution: Give the actors something “doable” (ex. Give her a compliment, Ask for a favor, ask for help)

It seems like that when I want to work on positioning and staging of actors I tend to ask more conceptual and abstract questions which can lead to confusion. I might be able to solve this if I instead ask them to “Do” certain things that result in different shapes. Ask them to play games, ask to reenact situations (think: Enemy game that resulted in the clutching line in HTE, that was a shape a director could use)

New Postulate ALERT!: Always start with a group hug, or something “binding” to reduce tension between actors.

Remember remind them “Don’t be afraid of silence”/ “Don’t be afraid of movement”

But also, in the moment you can police the actors in the scene.(is that your feet? or the character’s feet?)

YOU DONT NEED TO STOP THE SCENE TO CHANGE IT!

You can even give altering direction mid scene (“Turn the monologue into a dialogue now. Actor 1, Actor 2 and Actor 3 are having a moment, how do you feel about that”)

New Postulate ALERT!: Always consult actors after scene work/make them respond somehow, learn how they felt about the scene/what they felt during the scene.

Kelly made the actors yell at a chair to make them feel true anger before hand, then references it later “REMEMBER HOW PISSED YOU WERE AT THAT CHAIR!” The actors then have a source, a feeling, to refer back to later in a scene when they were in fact angry. She connected something in the context of the scene back to an exercise (SUCH A GOOD IDEA!)

Make your actors feel taken care of

Notes in a notebook maybe (kind of makes it seem you are more present)

Be confident (FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT!)

Set up the space

Let them know what the context of the scene is

Help find/discover character intention with the actors.

New Postulate ALERT!: Make sure you grab onto the GOALS of things, if you take away any things, make sure its the goals of the actors/directors/characters.

Balance questions with direction, don’t be to heavy either or.

“How does one line cause the other”

“What does that mean about how you feel about her”

Conrad’s directing : Had all 3 sit down next to each other “act as if you should know each other.”

“One of you get annoyed with what Nick is doing with his lips.”

said “Don't fake it Nick”

“Comment on it”

This was a great direction because Conrad knew that one of the characters in his piece was a nit picky person that was very annoyed at personal ticks.

Giving good specific action based on what's in script makes them more prone to those very tendencies in the scene.

It is the director’s job to: Help the actors discover their goal

 Clarify ambiguity in the script

 #2-Getting the actors to DO what they need to do (where, how, what it looks like when they do it)

 #1-Creating pictures and movement on the stage that focus our attention, tell the story, and convey ideas.

Don’t give line readings or comments of facial expressions because it encourages self consciousness as opposed to a consciousness in the scene (a direction).

A reaction to "We Are Proud to Present a Presentation!",

"We Are Proud to Present a Presentation!" was an arts Emerson play production I recently saw in Boston and the following was my reaction to it.

Reaction: I would have to give a mixed review about the play. Not so much in the sense that I felt it was mediocre, I just have highly contrasting opinions about the play. The start of the play wasn’t uninteresting. The very upfront, silly, and jovial characters giving an intro to their presentation was something I was lightly tickled by, but only for a little while. After about 15 minutes of these presenters trying to get into character I found myself picking at my nails. I was bored; there is only so much I’m going to invest in this play as an audience member. In the beginning they flat out tell you that they are going to talk to you about the herrero. Yet, the first 30 minutes are either A) talking about how they aren’t getting into character B)How much they dislike the letters their play is based on or C) Ridiculous exercises to help themselves get into character. This made for a pretty lousy intro and I was left uninterested. The play did eventually pick up though. I think the moment I became interested was the moment I started actually seeing what this play was about, which was around the time they were bickering who was to play the grandmother, which was right around when they were all arguing why white man couldn’t play a Namibian. After that I was very interested, mainly because that’s an issue that remains today. I was interested at pretty much every moment of the play after that. The only thing I disliked afterwards was the dying scene when white man shot black man 8 times in a long drawn out fashion. Otherwise the ending was very powerful. All between the almost seamless transition between the Herero genocide to slavery in the U.S. and the long 15 minute silence at the end of the play I was completely involved and struck with the incredibly heavy questions these characters were asking to the point where I couldn’t speak. In all the play was quite interesting in its entirety, and very powerful in its ending, but was very slow to pick up and had a poor introduction of its characters that, though funny at first, dragged on without interesting substance for quite some time.

What is this piece about?: It is about a group of actors who were trying to accurately portray the herero genocide in Namibia via utilisation and reading of letters written by German soldiers.

What the piece is also about: A group of people facing the trials, difficulties, quarrels, and disputes that come with trying to interpret, empathize with and witness a tragic incident (herrero genocide/slavery).

Questions I think the Company wanted to impress upon the crowd:

How do I feel about the fact that Slavery and Genocide happened?

How do I feel about people trying to interpret a culture that is supposedly my own?

Are people allowed to try and interpret such horrific events?

Should we be allowed to compare tragedies?

How do we feel about our/other races considering both the happenings of traumatic and race specific events and present day reactions/interpretations/empathy to those events?

Introduction

This blog is one that, as the title suggests, is my "director's log". This blog will serve to be bulletin board of my directing experience this year. Anything that I see fit to be written down (pretty much everything) shall be written down here, experiences, discoveries, new ideas, things I've witnessed and liked/hated and why etc...My hopes that from these little pieces will serve as an effective toolbox to refer back to and reflect on.