That I can tell you in a word… Tradition!
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.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think on a lot of shows, especially the classics, sometimes the best way to approach them is to piece together what has worked from other productions done before and allow the originality to be how you chose to put the ideas together instead of coming up with something out there. There’s not one right way to do a show, of course, but sometimes it’s been done the same way for years over and over again for a reason.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
That’s what I think. It’s kinda like… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There’s tons of ways to do something in a traditional way, but still make it my own vision. I just feel like maybe I’m not impressing the interviewers. Oh well. Thanks for the comment!
April 26th, 2008 at 8:13 am
My theory is that the vision comes from your interpretation of the material. I’m not great when it comes to strong visual re-imagining of things, but I think it is essential that a director has a strong interpretation of the work rooted in the playwright’s intentions and the text.
When I directed the final scene of A DOLL’S HOUSE (which was my college directing project), my interpretation was that Torvald wasn’t a villain. Instead, he and Nora had fallen into a pattern of living, a pattern that Nora allowed to happen until she realized the truth. It wasn’t a revloutionary interpretation, but that’s what guided me as I directed.
FYI, never do A DOLL’S HOUSE for a directing class because they characters’ dialogue is actually large paragraphs, which is very hard for actors to keep straight unless you have lots and lots of time for rehearsal. Mine went well, but my Torvald did have a “You foolish child” line in his back pocket to buy him time. He used it once.