So, this last week, a play that I had directed was performed in front of my friends in my STAC class. I was given the short one-act by my teacher to direct sometime back in February as part of a quarter project. The play is called Checkers by Dale Doerman. It is about this old married couple, Henry and Lillian, who are playing checkers and start to question their relationship. I have only seen it performed one other time, so I could not wait to show this to a new audience.
The process of directing a play was a little difficult at first. On the first day, we did a read through, then I started to block what would happen. I would say something or give notes, then one of the actors would say something and I would try and relate to myself to keep it going because I did not want to seem like a scary, domineering figure. I wanted to elaborately get the job done. I guess that it was partly my fault that we got a little behind in the first two or three rehearsals because I would be the one who was veering away from the goal when I was supposed to keep us in the right direction. There were also some other problems that my teacher fixed that I will mention later.
After a few rehearsals, things got better. The guy who was playing Henry caught onto the gruff Southern accent that I liked. The girl, however, was apprehensive at first. Well, it made sense because she was sick during the first couple of rehearsals, but one the first day that she was not sick, she still would not do it. We just paddled on through rehearsals and I used the voice recording technique to help them to memorize their lines easier. The voice recording technique is when you record yourself saying a section of the script (usually the whole scene, or in a one-act, beats) and you play the recording back whilst doing the blocking. After three to four times of doing the same scene in different ways, you start to realize that the lines are just words on a page and the way that you interpret the lines is key.
My teacher said that he wanted to come in to work on the directing process with us. I was surprised at what I saw. He worked a lot on the girl who was not getting the old woman accent right. He told her to do an impression of her grandmother and see where that gets her. Another run through, it came out a little bit better. He then asked them to step outside in the hall and demonstrated to them how to act like old people, with the main lesson being to have fun with it and not get so hung up on dialogue. It was so perfect and I felt like we were going to conquer this play.
During the last few rehearsals, I developed a better connection with my STAC acting friends. I brought a checkerboard from my house so that rehearsals can move closer to the actual production. I also was on both actor's cases when seeing if they had their costumes or not. I started talking notes during the three full run-throughs that we will get during the day (it was only three because we only had time to rehearse for about 45 minutes, which is time I can work with) and they really helped me see the patterns of what we were struggling with. It was a lot simpler to correct the blocking mistakes or any important lines that change the beats that were missed. By the way, for those of you who do not know, a beat is a line in a script that changes the subject of the conversation. For example, in Checkers, Henry is talking about his experiences in Paris, then he remembers that it is his turn. In a brief pause, Lillian asks him "What were the nurses like?". The beats are essential because it is a way of breaking the play (or a scene) down into sections for the actors to memorize.
One aspect of the play that I especially loved was the actors' decision during rehearsals to improvise a background story that establishes the setting that they are in in the play. It gave them a chance to play around with the characters more and have fun with what they can do with them.
Overall, I love directing. I will admit, I do need to work on keeping on task with things and keeping a semi-positive attitude, even if I have had a rough day because my actors will feed off of my emotions and we cannot have them getting a bad attitude all because of me. Nevertheless, in the end, I am so glad that I am able to make people laugh and speak with them through this astounding play. I hope that I am able to direct major productions in the performing arts career path that I want to take and see where I end up.
Lastly, there will be pictures that I will either find online or in a book/magazine that hopefully with tilt this post in a different dimension. Thank you very much:
Mike Nichols. The director of many famous plays and movies including The Graduate (1967), The Odd Couple (1964), and Spamalot (2005). He has the most Tony awards for Best Direction of a Play than any other director. Here, he is receiving his last Tony for Best Direction of a Play for Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (2012).
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