Should I feel bad that I have a hard time coming up with, quote, original, unquote, ideas?  Sometimes I like to write short stories or plays or whatnot.  Sometimes I succeed.  Most times I don’t.  Even when I succeed, they’re heavily based on something that happened in real life, or I’m adapting source material to fit my vision.  But even then my vision seems to be based on something else.

When I’m asked how I would go about designing concepts for, say, A Doll’s House, I have no idea.  Half the time the vision in my mind is kind of what I would expect the traditional director to do.  I wouldn’t really change the time period or the setting much.  I don’t really want to change things for the sake of changing things, or just because I think “hey, that would be neat to try.”  I’d like for them to have reasons.

Is that such a bad thing?  Whenever I’ve interviewed for directing, I’ve tried to come up with different ways to approach traditional plays, cause I figure that’s what they want.  They want someone who stands out from the crowd.  Someone who just wants to do A Doll’s House in a traditional way?  Why bother? That’s boring.  Do it from a fresh standpoint.

The biggest thing I’ve learned about directing in the past two years is that I don’t know much at all.  Every time I learn something it opens up more questions than it answers.  Questions I don’t know how to answer myself.  That’s one of the biggest reasons as to why I want to pursue an MFA program.