All of my life I’ve loved learning.  From the day I realized that letters on a page corresponded to words that we could hear and speak, I’ve loved reading.  I still remember the first book I ever read.  A Berenstein Bears book.

I’ve already relayed my terrifying and horrible public speaking experiences in a previous post, so I won’t rehash it now.  Despite my fear of speaking in front of people, I always enjoyed school.  I loved being around people and stuffing my brain with as much knowledge as I could.  Some classes weren’t as interesting as others (coughcalculuscough), but I still tried my best to know as much as I could.

My sophomore year of college, the summer after I switched from a Computer Science major to a Drama major, I got a job in North Carolina at the Roanoke Island Festival Park as a “historical interpreter.”  In other words, I was a living history re-enactor.  I spent all day dressed up in 16th century garb in 100+ degree heat, talking to visitors about the history of Roanoke Island and how life was back then.  Towards the end of the summer, I had grown comfortable with explaining esoteric topics to visitors and breaking down complex historical facts into entertaining stories.

When I got back to college, I continued developing my acting chops and performed on stage every chance I could get.  My best friends were techies, so I spent a lot of time talking to them about technical stuff and offering my actor point of view on some topics.  I learned a little bit of everything, from set design to lighting design, from prop-making to running the sound board.

Shortly after graduating, I went back to school to get my masters.  During the Fall term, there were two shows with auditions back-to-back.  Of course, I auditioned for both shows.  It turned out that each show had 6 and 12 people in it respectively.  The first show’s cast was almost entirely freshmen, with two upper classmen, while the second show only had three majors in the entire show — the rest were made up of non-majors who happened to be taking Acting that semester.  Professor McPsycho (you might remember her from “Good Things Come to Those Who Wait“) directed that one, and she almost always casts exclusively from her acting classes.

For two weeks after the casting notices went up, the actors of the department griped and complained.  Out of sixty performance majors, only 9 had been cast in a show that semester.  The other fifty-one didn’t have anything to do.  To be fair, maybe 15-20 of those 50 majors weren’t very active in the department.  Still, that left almost 30 actors without something to do!

Thomas Jefferson once said, “and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  This is precisely what happened.  Rather than fixing the problem, the actors chose to bitch and moan about not having a part.  Rather than putting something together themselves, they sat around and complained.

Well, I wasn’t going to do that.  I wanted to be active in the theatre and by the beard of Zeus, it was going to happen.  I went to the department head and asked for permission to produce a show.  He asked who was going to direct it.  I shrugged and said, “I’ll do it.”  He agreed and gave me instructions on putting together a proper proposal.  I spent the next three days in his personal library reading through dozens of plays.  I finally settled on a stage adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984″.

I received final approval of the production in the third week of October, along with a notice that opening night would be November 30th.  That gave me about five and a half weeks to get together a cast, a crew, rehearse, build sets, etc.

Shit.

I got my best friend, a very experienced and knowledgeable techie, to be my stage manager, and I held auditions two days later.  The show could have been done with 8 people, with doubled up parts, but in the interest of student-actor experience, I cast each part individually. I was under a lot of pressure to get this done.  I had no budget, I had no help from the faculty, and I had a very limited time frame (2 hours rehearsal per night, tops).

When all was said and done, the show was a success.  The cast came together and gave stellar performances to sold out houses.

That’s when I discovered I’d been bitten by the directing bug.

I enjoyed the whole learning process, researching the script, putting the set pieces together, blocking, character development, making sure the lights were perfect, the sound cues spot on, advertising.  It was challenging beyond belief, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle.  And in the end, we came together as a team and delivered George Orwell’s 1984 to an audience that loved it.

I loved it, too.

As I watched the Tony Awards the other night, I saw several clips from “The 39 Steps” which I had honestly never heard of.  I was fascinated by the way the actors would switch characters.  Sometimes they simply switched hats, other times they had intricate choreography that put one character out of sight just long enough to switch hats or masks or whatnot to change characters.

I imagine this method doesn’t take very long to get used to, much like the puppeteers in “Avenue Q”.  After a few minutes, you don’t even notice the puppeteers — until they want to be noticed.  The same thing probably applies for “The 39 Steps”.

So back to my original point.  The scenes that I saw really got my mind racing about those kinds of possibilities.  I’d often seen similar shows (like Patrick Stewart’s one-man version of “A Christmas Carol”), but I had never really considered it from a directing standpoint.  It’s raised some questions in my mind.

1)  Does the show need to be specifically written with those kinds of mechanics in mind, or could you theoretically adapt regular plays to fit that kind of model?  Could we, say, take Romeo and Juliet and do the same thing, or would massive changes be required?

2)  How much does the audience enjoy that kind of switcheroo?  I imagine there has to be some sort of seamlessness in character changing so the audience doesn’t even think about it.  Another Avenue Q example:  Several times an actor will hand off the puppet to someone else while he leaves the stage to grab another puppet.  Nearly every time, I didn’t notice the hand-off until the actor came back on stage with a new puppet.  If I were to adapt Romeo and Juliet to the “39 Steps” model of switching characters with three or four actors, how do you make it seamless enough that the audience isn’t distracted by the changes?

3)  How can I take these kinds of concepts and apply them to an existing (or new) play in an original or different way?  I don’t want to flat out copy The 39 Steps.  Their switcheroos were flawlessly executed and seamless, but I don’t really want to steal that idea or clone the show.  I don’t want my Romeo and Juliet to be “The 39 Steps” in sheep’s clothing, so to speak.

I’ve been working on a play for the past year or two, and I had a transition planned for the characters, but seeing these clips from the Tony’s has given me some new ideas.  I should pull out that script and see what I can do.

Last week, I interviewed at a school for their MFA Directing graduate program. I met the department head for two interviews, took a tour of the campus, and met several of the graduate students. The whole drive down there, I kept racking my brain to come up with some good questions to ask. I know that interviewers like to be asked questions as much as they like to ask questions. It gives an insight into the interviewee’s personality and life that they won’t otherwise get.

I racked my brain the entire way down. I couldn’t really come up with much.

The interview began, and every time I had a question pop into my head about whatever it was the guy was talking about, I asked it. I felt like I did a good job coming up with questions, and I honestly learned a lot more than I would have had I not asked those questions. At the end of the interview, though, he said “Well, we’ll set up another interview tomorrow. Think of some questions that you might have so we can talk about it tomorrow.” I was sorta disappointed. I didn’t have any more questions.

I got in my car on the way out, and I called one of my college professors, the one I always turn to when I have questions about theatre stuff. He’s pretty good with that kind of stuff. So I call him, and I ask him for some advice, for some kinds of questions I can ask that would, I dunno, make me look smart.

His response? “Ask about things you want out of a program, not just what’s required. Don’t ask about how many classes you can cut, or how much it costs, or anything like that. Ask about what you want out of the program.”

I said, “But everything I want to do is everything I’m required to do! He’s already answered every question I’ve had so far! And on top of that, he answered everyone question I didn’t ask!”

He laughed. “I guess I can’t help you then.”

Boy, did I feel stupid walking back into that interview the next day with no questions up my sleeve.

I’ve been keeping my mind and my eyes on the path in front of me. I’ve chosen a set of goals, a set of plans, and I’m trying to follow them to the best of my ability. As I go, I’ve been trying to keep my eye on the big picture as well. My life should be more than worrying about my next paycheck, more than worrying about whether my health insurance payment will be on time. My life should be about making a difference and being me to the best of my ability.

I’ve been asked a lot recently about my future. My parents are bugging me to get a job, and believe me, I’m trying to find one. I’ve come up with a series of plans and back-up plans to ensure that I get the future I want, but so far, things aren’t really working out.

Plan A: Apply to graduate schools, interview, and get accepted into a program. Finish the program, get some more professional experience, and direct/work professionally. My endgame is to wind up like Scott Walters, an old fogey in a cushy theatre professor job. (Just kidding, Mr. Walters. Sorta.)

Plan B: Should I not get accepted into grad school this year, find a job of some sort (whether teaching or something different). Work to pay the bills until next year when I can apply to a new round of grad school interviews and auditions. I will, of course, endeavor to stay involved in community and any professional theatre I can.

Plan C: Roll over and die. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to this.

Recently, I was talking to a fellow blogger who is a grad student getting her MFA in Directing. Obviously, this is a route that I want to go. However, during our conversation, she mentioned that she took some flak from the faculty about the few times when she stepped outside of the field to participate. She won an award or some such for a research paper she wrote, and her professors nagged her how she should be in an M.A. program if she likes to write so much.

Last weekend I visited SETC for some grad school auditions and interviews. During my grad school interviews, a college rep came up to me and asked to see my resume. Excited, I handed him one. Rather than interviewing me, though, he started rattling off tips for improving my resume. I felt slightly better after he mentioned he was doing this for everyone and not specifically because my resume sucked. He had some good advice.

At one point I pointed to a line on my resume indicating that I had a masters degree in Secondary Education.

“Is this a good thing to have on here?”

“Oh yes, absolutely,” he replied.

“It won’t show that I’m, I don’t know… flip-flopping, indecisive?”

“Oh no, not at all,” he answered. “It tells me a lot of things about you. It tells me that you’re an educated person. It tells me that you’ve already completed one masters program, and if you can do that, you can complete another. By having graduated with the degree, it tells me that you’ve completed one course of study and are now moving on to another. It tells me that you’re a well-rounded individual, and I know that when I take you and the other grad students out to dinner after a rehearsal, I know we’ll have something to talk about besides the show.”

So, apparently, it’s good to be well-rounded, educated, intelligent. Why, then, was my friend getting flak from her professors? It’s not even like she left the field of theatre altogether. She wrote about a theatrical topic. Shouldn’t directors be knowledgeable in all aspects of theatre? Won’t that make them better directors? If a director doesn’t have a clue about lights and how they work, how, then, can she communicate to the lighting designers what exactly it is that she wants?

I feel that exploring all of my options is very important. Even if I commit to a specific sub-field or course of study, I still feel that I should keep my eyes open on the horizon. I should feel free to study other subjects, so long as they don’t interfere with my main priority — directing.

Doesn’t everyone feel this way? Why wouldn’t they?

One of the biggest problems that I face in my local theatre is a large sense of apathy. Most of the people here bitch and moan about how they didn’t get cast in this, they didn’t get cast in that, the theatre’s screwing them out of this, screwing them out of that. They complain and complain, and the department looks the other way. Why? Because they won’t help themselves.

The solution, obviously, is to produce their own shows — do what Scott Walters’ suggests, and work together and do small scenes together, monologues, 10 minute plays. The solution is to do their own work. The theatre doesn’t owe them anything. The theatre will, however, help those who help themselves.

A good example is a few years ago, one of the seniors embarked upon her senior project. She proposed a drama camp during the summer for kids. The rest of the department loved the idea, and so it happened. She ran it almost entirely by students, with only one faculty member assisting in scene painting. By the end of a week, the kids had performed a show for their parents. It was a huge success, raising the student drama society about $3000. Naturally, the department picked this up, and now it’s a departmental, annual thing run fully by the theatre (with assistance from students).

So, clearly, the theatre itself will assist a project, and maybe even take it on permanently, if the students, actors, and crew will start it and it proves to be successful.

Unfortunately, nobody wants to get off their asses to do so. In the past two years, there have been a handful of attempts to encourage and provide acting opportunities, including: three student-directed plays (including two by me), an improv theatre troupe (failed), and a cabaret (failed). The latter two failed largely because of a lack of participation. Everyone (well, in general) would rather sit around and bitch to each other than get off their butts and participate.

Which brings me to my conclusion. I’m going to echo, once again, Scott Walters. He has a brilliant plan to inspire change in local-actor hiring practices, but he makes a point, too: people don’t want to put themselves at risk if they don’t have to.

So, obviously, the trick is to provide them with an appropriate desire-to-laziness ratio. That is, the desire to participate must overcome their laziness. This worked in the two shows that I directed, because the students involved were sufficiently motivated to perform on stage — they were small shows and almost everyone had what could be termed a “lead role”, which motivated them to perform. Unfortunately, those kinds of shows aren’t the kinds of things that can be easily repeated. They would need to be something that worked so well that the theatre could pick it up, but similar enough that you don’t need to do an entirely new creative process every time (like, say, the drama camp). In addition, you need to have one person who is willing to do the vast majority of the work and is able to delegate the small tasks to their friends who are helping.

To summarize:

1) People are lazy
2) We need projects to do
3) The projects need to be low-risk, short in time-span, yet still produce results
4) They need to be easy to participate in
5) They need to be repeatable with minimal supervision

So what kinds of things can we do? Hmm.

I’ll get back to you on that.

You know, two summers ago I wrote a play. It was inspired by a conversation I had on a front porch on the 4th of July. There were about 10 people there at the party, but only three of them were dominating the conversation, and as I’m not very good at group conversations, I just listened. One of the three was a professor, another a student. The third was a girl who was visiting from across the country. In a small town like ours, that’s a huge deal.

She was telling us about her life in another place, and we were all rapt with attention. The student expressed his desire to leave, to find himself, and the professor (in rather crude terms) seconded the notion.

Regardless, I found the conversation to be inspiring. They spoke in a very real, down-to-earth way, but instead of half-hearted smalltalk, this was passionate, fiery conversation. It felt like I was watching a play.

As soon as I realized this, I switched my brain into Line Memorizing Mode, where I remember things accurately and quickly. I dunno, it’s a trick I have, I guess. Anyway, as soon as I got home, I wrote the rough draft of a play. It wasn’t long at 25 pages, but it was a good start.

Over the next year, I polished it and refined it. The character personalities were heavily based on my friends on that porch, with several monologues coming verbatim (at least, as best as I could remember) from that porch conversation. I wasn’t ripping off their ideas — I’d already had those ideas. But they had articulated them in ways I’d never been able to do before.

So the character personalities were based on my friends, but the characters deep down inside were based mostly on my own experiences (which, I suspect, everyone else has gone through as well). The conversations were composed entirely of thoughts that I had had before or experiences that I had actually been through. I wrote the way my friends might say it, but the underlying message came from within, rather than from them.

After a year of polishing it up, I turned in a proposal at my school to direct it. It took six weeks to get a response.

The producer came to me, asked me to come to his office, sat me down, and said “This is crap. Lazy writing.”

His reasoning was the professor’s character cursed constantly. I just nodded. I couldn’t very well tell him that the character was based on one of his employees, that this was very, very realistic writing. If it had been truly lazy writing, then the other two characters would have been cursing as well. As it is, neither of them ever say a curse word.

So, my script sits on a shelf, waiting for a day when I can produce it on my own, when I have the resources and opportunity to put it on stage.

I suspect that many people will connect with it. I don’t think it will make Broadway, by any means. It’s not that good. But it’s good enough for a one-act.

Like the characters in my play, someday I know my dreams will come true.

I don’t know how many of you actually follow the professional theatre blogs out there, but I’ve been trying to keep abreast of the latest and greatest in the theatre world. One of these is a blog by Scott Walters.

Scott has an intriguing viewpoint in theatre. He believes theatre has failed America, that there is a new regime change, so to speak, in sight. He believes that the status quo is about to change, and a new order will arise.

I’m not going to rehash everything Scott believes. Instead, I’ll refer you to his blog.

In other news, my friend William is having difficulties in his first year as an MFA student. He’s one of the more capable people I know, so the fact that he is having trouble scares me a bit.

As a result of Scott’s blog on MFA programs, the subsequent discussions, and William’s troubles, I’m having second thoughts about joining an MFA program. There are dozens of programs out there, and I’m unsure which is the best to join. I’m not even sure an MFA program is the best direction to go. I’m writing this to sort of lay out my plan, my ideas, and see what I can come up with.

Pros:

- I want to teach college eventually, and I need an MFA to do that
- I want to direct, and my undergraduate training was sorely lacking in that area. An MFA will provide that training.
- I need to make connections with the theatre world, and my undergraduate school was so far removed as to provide no connections at all.
- I need to see more diverse views on theatre than what I saw in my undergrad program.
- Looking at Broadway billings, it’s painfully obvious that the most successful artists are those who have MFA’s and extensive training.

Cons:

- It costs a lot of money
- It’s extremely tough, and given William’s experiences, I’m afraid of getting into a program I don’t fit well with
- I could theoretically get directing training by working independently or professionally
- Working professionally could gain me some networking connections without the hassle of an MFA program (which, according to Scott, is outdated anyway)
- Broadway, while a nice idea, isn’t exactly a priority goal for me, so an MFA wouldn’t help me in that regard.

Oh geez. It’s tougher than I thought. I’m going to say that the training will probably be equal either way, so that’s out. The connections are probably equal either way, so that’s out too. The Broadway option cancels the MFA authority out. So that basically leaves me with one criteria: I wish to teach college at some point in the future.

I need an MFA…

..or do I?

(I’m breaking my posting schedule with this, but I’d like to get this out today.)

This is my last show in my current location.  Once this show is over, I’m moving away, either home or to wherever I’m going to grad school.  There is a lot I’m going to miss about this place, but honestly, it’s just time for me to move on.  However, I intend to go out with a bang.

I have an idea, and I’m hoping some of my friends will be willing to participate. The whole idea of this exercise is to improve ourselves as actors by getting criticism, suggestions and feedback from our peers, our faculty, and from random people who show up to the performance. In addition, this project will be huge brownie points in the eyes of the faculty, for anyone who participates.

I have a book of a collection of 10 minute plays. I’ve been reading through it, and I’ve found several plays that would be fairly easy to do, yet fun as well.  The question is:  will they be interested as well?  Here’s my proposal.

Mission Statement: We intend to produce multiple 10-minute plays for free to anyone who wishes to attend, for the intents of A) having fun, B) becoming better actors and C) helping generate interest in the theatre.

The Plan:

1) Get three or four people together (actually, the more the merrier)
2) Assign parts
3) Either take turns directing or I’ll direct all the plays
4) Spend 2-3 weeks practicing (they’re 10 minute plays, so not a lot of practice required)
5) Perform them (for free) one afternoon in the black box studio
6) Ask the audience for their criticisms (either written or verbal). To increase participation of this aspect, anyone who participates gets a coke and cookie or something.
7) Have a Post-Mortem meeting with everyone involved, go over the criticisms and suggestions. Become better actors

The key here is to offer them for free (to encourage attendance and participation), and to GAIN MEANINGFUL FEEDBACK from others. One of the problems that I see in the department is a lack of feedback from our instructors. Very rarely are we told what could be done better (especially after a play is over with). Every other industry out there does something similar, and it helps them avoid making the same mistakes over and over. Since our instructors won’t give us feedback on their own, let’s do our own project and generate our own feedback.
Hopefully, I’ll get enough participants (only need three!) to get this off the ground and running.  And hopefully, this will be such a success that it happens every semester, even after I’m gone.   Perhaps, in the future, it will become a 10-minute play festival or something.

What do you think?  Do you have better ideas, or perhaps some suggestions to improve this?  I’d love to read your comments!

“Hey.”

“Hey, Director,” Randall says, measuring some fabric. “What can I do for ya?”

“Is Clem around?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.”

“Can I help you instead?” he asks.

I am skeptical. While he’s a nice guy and definitely knows what he’s talking about, I just don’t ever find that I have much in common with Randall. I prefer talking with Clem about these sorts of things. I shrug and decide to go for broke.

“Sure,” I say, pulling out my director concepts for A Raisin in the Sun, Mother Courage, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “I’m working on my concepts for the upcoming conference.” He nods, knowing full well what kind of preparations I’m making for the conference.

“What’s the problem?”

“Well, I wanted to show you my concepts and see if you could give me any advice.” He nods and I hand him the papers. I keep going. “For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, I’m a little confused. I don’t want to go with pure Elizabethan style costumes, but I don’t want to go modern either. Both are overdone. So I figured I’d go with French Baroque. I like the time period, and it’s different and… well… I don’t know if that’s a good enough reason.”

I pause, waiting for him to respond. He doesn’t.

“Is it?” He looks up.

“Well, do you think it is?” I shake my head. “Then you need to find a reason. Read through the script again, see if you can find some parallels between the French Baroque period and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I nod. I point to the A Raisin in the Sun concept.

“My idea here was–” I begin. He cuts me off.

“Where are the acting concepts?” He shuffles the papers. I stare at him. He looks up at me. “The actor concepts?” I’m dumb-struck.

“Uhh…” I’m speechless. Of course. What’s the whole point of directors? To direct the actors! I had forgotten to include actor concepts!

I had conferred with my friend William regarding the concepts in the first place, and since he’s first and foremost a lighting designer, naturally the discussion centered around technical design aspects. I’d completely forgotten about the acting side of things. How stupid can I be?

By this time next week, I assure you, my faithful readers, that my full director concepts will be posted. Somewhere.

God, I’m a fool.