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A Great Production = Skills of the Director + Skills of the Actor

So much of the great advice in life focus on outcomes rather than process, goals rather than plans & strategies like "buy low, sell high" advice: that's the goal, the idea, but -- how do you do that? How do you figure out how things "really work?"

Well, I have no answer other than it comes with dogged determination and the patience and persistence to acquire the necessary experience.

A Great Production = Skills of the Director + Skills of the Actor is an obvious calculus, but for a long time, I didn't really understand the specifics, but now I'm starting to understand.

What can be frustrating, for both the actor and the director, is that it IS a partnership -- they've got to work with each other, but both have to KNOW how to work, i.e., waking up some morning, without any significant training or experience, and thinking "yes, I'm a director" or "yes, I'm an actor" is about as crazy as waking up some morning, without any significant training or experience, and thinking "yes, I'm a neurosurgeon." "I'm going to find people who need neurosurgery, and then I'm just gonna jump in a do it." Bad idea.

I've written a lot about the skills of a actor, i.e., how to read a script, how to work on text and off of other actors -- these are significant non-trivial skills and it takes determination and patience and persistence to figure this stuff out, and to get better and better at it.

On the other hand, I've never directed (nor do I really want to) -- nor have a ever studied it (though three excellent books are: Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball; Sense of Direction: Some Observations on the Art of Directing by William Ball; & Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative by Peter Brook) -- but I have managed to pick a few things up on my way:

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The Power of Stillness

In a previous post, it struck me that we get the opportunities we need (that is, whatever I'm doing now: this particular role, that particular theatre/venue, the quality of the production, everything -- that's exactly what I need to be doing . . . in order to go where I need to go).

Lately, in class (Word Of Mouth Studios), Deborah's been cracking the whip to keep me still during monologues and scene work. Why? Because I've got all this energy, but -- it's unfocused. Worse, the deepest part of myself is not fully "acting," rather, when I move around, use my hands, move my head, it's those parts of me, and my voice, that's doing a lot of the acting (by "voice," I don't mean the necessary vocal and breathe support that a particular text requires -- what I mean is I start to use my voice to "indicate" what the character is doing, what the character wants instead of letting all that come from my center).

"Deepest part of myself?" "my center?" Confused?

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New Challenges and Art Creating Moral Panic

I got cast in an original play that opens in Brooklyn in early April. The character is a charismatic religious figure, but while a bit heavy-handed, he's quite benevolent. It should be fun to do because he's someone I'm normally not like, i.e., he's highly confident, self-assured, but grounded and genuinely warm and caring (though most people would find his means heavy-handed and his motives suspect).

His monologues are not standard monologues (i.e., they wouldn't be good choices for audition monologues), but they do offer a terrific opportunity to master a type of text that we've been working with in Deborah Carlson's Word Of Mouth Studios. The text piece we've been working with have been highly expressive, almost poetic, pieces.

We've been working on them for several reasons:

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