Parker’s Performance Playbook – On Directing

Happy April, Encore Family! Although it feels like auditions happened just yesterday, the performances of our Student Directed One-Acts are coming up at the end of the month on April 25th and 26th. We have an exciting mini-series of interviews coming to the blog soon, where we will meet the student directors and hear all about what brought them to this project, so stay tuned for that!

Today, I want to talk about the job of a director . It’s a big responsibility, and this is the first time we have brought students along on the job. As the title suggests, the director leads the whole show in a certain direction , helping each designer, technician, and actor know where the production is headed. If a show is a ship, the director is the captain. You can have every deckhand and boatswain doing their job perfectly, but without a captain they don’t know where they are sailing to! 

The job of the director is to bring the creative vision for their specific version of the show. It requires an open mind and creative solutions to practical problems. If you were to copy the original production of the show or rely on another theater’s production for inspiration, that would be taking someone else’s intellectual property. A director faces the challenge of following the story laid out in a script and acknowledging what audiences may be familiar with, while bringing new ideas into it in order to have a unique final product. 

In the rehearsal room, the director leads actors through their blocking and works with them on exploring their characters. It can look like playing improv games with a character or answering specific questions about a character that aren’t addressed in the script. Some directors come with line-by-line blocking already written down, others like to find the flow of the scene when the actors come into the room. Whatever their process, the director is pivotal in shaping what the final show looks and feels like.

There are many paths you can take to becoming a director, and we are so excited to be trying out Student-Directed One Acts this season. Our Season of Courage will be exemplified in their work; it takes a lot of courage to try something new like these students are! In their upcoming interviews, we will hear what brought each director to this project and what they have loved about it so far.

Stay tuned!

Blog contribution by Parker Nelson. Photos by Cindy Kane.

Parker’s Performance Playbook – On Directing

Encore Stage & Studio

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