I had one guy in the last show that did everything almost exactly the way I wanted him to, and he’d ask me if I had any notes for him and I just said “Just the general notes I gave everybody. You’re doing fine, keep it up.” and that’s it. And that’s fine, too, but when that’s what they tell you every single time, it starts to feel fake, like they don’t want to hurt my feelings.

On the other hand, you kind of have to trust that the director won’t completely fuck up his own show out of fear of hurting your feelings.

At any rate, I’m really talking more about the times when there truly is room for improvement and when the criticism will help. It’s just that in the past ten years, I can count on one hand the times I received honest-to-God constructive criticism outside of a classroom. And all of those came from professors anyway.

1. They really are doing well and I don’t want them to screw around with their performance. Yes, things can always be improved. But sometimes the best thing an actor can do is try to recreate, with both precision and renewed inspiration, the blocking/intention/relationships/line deliveries/etc. from the previous rehearsal.

2. They’re being neurotic or overly worried about their performance. Telling them what they’re doing well is much more important than focusing on the areas that need improvement, at the present time.

3. They might have room for improvement, but they are way, way down on my triage list. (This is reserved for those performances that are in desperate trouble.)

4. They’re making the notes session (or post-notes session) about them instead of about the ensemble. During the run stage, a notes session is like tweaking a musical ensemble; flutes louder here, can we have the trombone anticipate the entrance, etc. The entire ensemble is expected to listen to these notes and understand how each note applies not only to its specific actor, but to the ensemble as a whole — which includes their individual performance! If I need Actor A to be louder, then Actor B and every other actor onstage needs to be ready to support Actor A, etc.

So the actor who comes up afterwards and asks “what about me?” will generally get a friendly-but-hurried smile and a quick “you’re fine”-esque response, followed by a suggestion to help out the ensemble re: our run notes.