Textbook (The Director's Eye), part 2 (Rehearsal)
The actor is the creative artist most identified by audiences with their experience of theater. Actors portray their characters’ wants and needs through believable personal behavior that mirrors the characters’ psychological and emotional lives within the world of the play. British actor Sir Laurence Olivier once said that acting "is an everlasting search for truth." Acting begins with an individual's talent, imagination, discipline, the need to express, and the process of observation through the sensory organs—eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose. Reduced to its simplest terms, the actor's goal is to tell the character's circumstances within the story of the play. Through years of training with skilled coaches and through meticulous homework and long rehearsals, the actor is able to convey the psychological and emotional truth of the character's behavior within the context of the play. The successful actor combines inner belief in the role with learned technique to create a sense of life taking place on stage as if for the very first time. [encarta]
We have a problem; I will be using Method and Biomechanics terms, as if you know them. Please, read the glossaries at least.
Deconstructing of Actor: in order to mix text and space inside the spectator's mind we must break down "actor" (another medium for director) the way we do it with the text!
To understand this process of deconstruction read acting directories -- Method and Biomechanics are about how we take apart actor-machine in order to put it back together within the system of the spectacle...
Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques by Viola Spolin; Northwestern University Press, 1963
Go to Stanislavsky for Directors; directors must know everything actors know. And more. This is why THR121 Fundamentals of Acting is a required class for directors. I said to know, I didn't say to do. Only actors can do acting, not directors.
I do not write much about the "critic" function, but without developing this "creature" in you, you won't be able to direct. Remember Stanislavsky' "split in two"? Well, director is in principle nothing short of "multiple personality"!
In short, the main line "Play -- Public"...
The formula is simple:
Text -- Director -- Actor
Director is in the middle. I could give another equasion:
Text -- Director -- Space (Stage)
Now you understand why director is between play and actors by deault: he has to arrange the place of action for them. And in production process it looks like:
Play -- Director -- Designers
Why don't we put it all together?
Text -- Director -- Design (Set, Costumes, Light, Sound) -- Actors
Nothing could be done about it, even if you are a minimalist. You have to create this chronotope (time-space) of the show out of your reading of the play for actors to transfrom the characters intro roles.
Well, designers come in before actors. Check the Dangerous Liaisons files (I direct it in the Spring 2002, opens at the end of April) and see Tara's costume designes. Valmont in blue, red? When? ...
In order for us to mix the pre-text (play) with the stage (space-time in part III), we need to mix "text" (drama) and performer... We need to disassemble each actor to produce the real teatrical "pre-text" (performance).
Remember, the actual text is only the drama, experienced by the spectator!
In Method Acting we learn the techniques of INNER "reconstruction" (character > actor > role), in BM -- outer (physical) rearrangement. In short, Method is more suitable for actor--play, BM is for actor--stage training/analysis.
Method -- table period and one-on-one rehearsals. BM -- groups (on stage).
... you better read webpages on film acting (extreme case of "actor's deconstriction")!
Directors on Directing : A Source Book of the Modern Theatre
Less than 200 years ago the director was only an "ideal" projected by disgruntled critics. Today, productions wouldn't be able to survive with our the adept talents of the director. This book has been known for years as the guide to the "unknown theater" of the director. This collection is comprised of the voices of the modern theater as they state their credos and explore their craft. Topics include: the emergence of the director; behind the fourth wall; the art of rehearsal; light and space; and much more. Directors and avid theater-buffs.
Notes on Directing
After 50 years in the theatre, English director Frank Hauser joins New York writer and director Russell Reich to bring you an inspirational and practical guide that critics are calling "provocative," "lucid," and "indispensable." Luminaries like Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Richard Eyre, Edward Albee, Moises Kaufman, Rosemary Harris, and Jerry Zaks have hailed "Notes on Directing" as "witty," "bold," "audacious," and "an instant classic."
Directing Plays (Theatre Arts)
Directing Plays explores both the theory and practice of directing plays, with particular emphasis on textual interpretation. Don Taylor guides the student through the complex process of choosing a play, the working partnership of director, playwright and designer, the delicate matter of casting a play, the rehearsal process and everything which needs to happen before the production is up and running.
Summary
Actor is the main tool of director!
Questions
What is difference between Public, Audience and Spectators?
See Spectator's Directory
Homework
A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre
A Director Prepares is a fascinating and thought-provoking examination of the challenges of making theatre. In it, Anne Bogart speaks candidly and with immense wisdom of the courage required to create "art with great presence." No other book on the art of theatre comes even close to offering this much understanding, experience and inspiration.
Notes
Must take Acting One before getting into directing class!
ON DIRECTING by Harold Clurman
In his writings as a teacher, director, and theater critic, Harold Clurman often comes across as the most approachable of the formidable talents associated with the Group Theater and the many versions of "the Method," the American version of Stanislavsky's teaching. Written towards the end of his long career as one of the American theater's most successful directors, On Directing is a highly readable yet deeply insightful look at the job of a theatrical director.
Theater Directing: Art, Ethics, Creativity (Studies in Theatre Arts)
Secrets of Acting Shakespeare: The Original Approach (A Theatre Arts Book)
... and MISE page at Theatre Biomechanics for Actors.
Are there "fundamental" (principle) directions: left from right, diagonal and etc. ?
"Mise-en-scene" is a French theatrical expression for the kind of staging matrix one would find in a director's text
with specific arrangements of time and space on stage to control actors, playscript and public.
We have a problem; I will be using Method and Biomechanics terms, as if you know them. Please, read the glossaries at least.
Deconstructing of Actor: in order to mix text and space inside the spectator's mind we must break down "actor" (another medium for director) the way we do it with the text!
Directing Plays (Theatre Arts)
Directing Plays explores both the theory and practice of directing plays, with particular emphasis on textual interpretation. Don Taylor guides the student through the complex process of choosing a play, the working partnership of director, playwright and designer, the delicate matter of casting a play, the rehearsal process and everything which needs to happen before the production is up and running.
