I used to have a blog years ago, when (in my 20s) I was arrogant enough to assume that anyone cared what I thought. While I no longer presume to carry such authority, I have some thoughts to share on directing that people may, or may not, find useful.
Speak the speech I pray you, as I pronounced it to you-
I'd never really had any aspirations to direct until I got to my fourth year of University, studying Theatre. I auditioned for the role of Ophelia in our school's production of Hamlet and was unsuccessful. Still wanting involvement in the production, I agreed to join on as the Assistant Director and found that I enjoyed directing a great deal more than I'd anticipated. There was something very rewarding about guiding actors and watching them give even greater performances. For all intents and purposes it remains their performance, their skill and their talent. But fostering that talent and bringing out something that they have inside of them gave me a wonderful rise. I began to enjoy directing and saw it both as a challenge to create a great play and to figure out what made characters (and actors) tick.
Kermit the Frog. Geoffrey Tennant, Princess Leia.
My best friend played Hamlet. We've stayed friends over a number of years and a while ago when the social media game "Which 3 Fictional Characters Best Describe You?" was the fad of the week, we did each other's. He picked Kermit the Frog, Geoffrey Tennant and Princess Leia for me. He does indeed know me well, and all three have functioned as heroes of sorts in my life. Equally interesting, all three speak to my work as a director in very distinct ways that I've recently had a chance to reflect on:
Kermit
I've often cited Jim Henson as a hero of mine. As with any celebrity, all we have to go on are people's reports of their character and what we see of their art. As a life-long fan of the Muppets, aspiring to create something that has brought so many people so much joy has fueled a great deal of the passion I have in everything I do. By all accounts Jim Henson embodied an incredible combination of kindness and creativity.
And then there's Kermit's speech to Doc Hopper at the end of the Muppet Movie, which has been a guiding ethos for my work as an artist.
I've got a dream too. But it's about singing and dancing and making people happy. That's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And, well, I've found a whole bunch of friends who all have the same dream. And it kind of makes us like a family.
They may not have called it a "Safe Theatre Space" in 1979, but to me this is describing an artistic community of respect, warmth and a willingness to be brave and put one's self out there to create something special. And that art matters... even art that's just about making people happy. While I never take for granted that it is a privilege to be able to work in an artistic community and live a dream that is about more than making money and gaining status, there is also a tremendous amount of work involved in creating that community.
Creating an environment for artists to thrive takes planning and preparation, but more importantly it takes emotional labour. Patience, openness, attentive listening, and putting one's own ego aside for the good of the play are the true work of directing in my opinion. These things foster an environment where actors can experiment and make mistakes, concentrate on how to best serve the play, feel appreciated for their work and ultimately have fun.
While I don't always live up to these ideals as a director, it's something I constantly try to work towards during rehearsals. Even when my patience is wearing thin and my own ego is creeping into the picture I work as hard as I can to ensure that space is held for everyone to feel valued, heard and appreciated. This is what Jim Henson taught me.
Jim Henson died at only 53 years old from complications due to pneumonia (a disease which I've had myself a half dozen times). By all accounts: he did not look after himself.
Geoffrey
For those unfamiliar with the TV program Slings and Arrows the show takes place in the fictional southwestern Ontario town of "New Burbage" where there is an annual Shakespeare festival called the "New Burbage Festival". A thinly veiled ode to Ontario's Stratford Festival, it examines the art of theatre, with a particular focus on Shakespeare. Why do we still perform Shakespeare? What relevance does it still have in our lives? Geoffrey Tennant (played by Paul Gross) becomes the Artistic Director of the Festival and ruffles feathers immediately with his eccentric behaviour (he formerly worked as an actor at the festival until a mental health collapse), as well as his poor social skills. But he also has a passion for great art that is unmatched. In a theatre community that was complacent and uninspired he breathes new life. He cares about the acting, the text, and the power that theatre has to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
They may not have called it a "Safe Theatre Space" in 1979, but to me this is describing an artistic community of respect, warmth and a willingness to be brave and put one's self out there to create something special. And that art matters... even art that's just about making people happy. While I never take for granted that it is a privilege to be able to work in an artistic community and live a dream that is about more than making money and gaining status, there is also a tremendous amount of work involved in creating that community.
Creating an environment for artists to thrive takes planning and preparation, but more importantly it takes emotional labour. Patience, openness, attentive listening, and putting one's own ego aside for the good of the play are the true work of directing in my opinion. These things foster an environment where actors can experiment and make mistakes, concentrate on how to best serve the play, feel appreciated for their work and ultimately have fun.
While I don't always live up to these ideals as a director, it's something I constantly try to work towards during rehearsals. Even when my patience is wearing thin and my own ego is creeping into the picture I work as hard as I can to ensure that space is held for everyone to feel valued, heard and appreciated. This is what Jim Henson taught me.
Jim Henson died at only 53 years old from complications due to pneumonia (a disease which I've had myself a half dozen times). By all accounts: he did not look after himself.
Geoffrey
For those unfamiliar with the TV program Slings and Arrows the show takes place in the fictional southwestern Ontario town of "New Burbage" where there is an annual Shakespeare festival called the "New Burbage Festival". A thinly veiled ode to Ontario's Stratford Festival, it examines the art of theatre, with a particular focus on Shakespeare. Why do we still perform Shakespeare? What relevance does it still have in our lives? Geoffrey Tennant (played by Paul Gross) becomes the Artistic Director of the Festival and ruffles feathers immediately with his eccentric behaviour (he formerly worked as an actor at the festival until a mental health collapse), as well as his poor social skills. But he also has a passion for great art that is unmatched. In a theatre community that was complacent and uninspired he breathes new life. He cares about the acting, the text, and the power that theatre has to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
I did not give my Macbeth this direction.
I spoke with him about life and fate though. And we talked about how it might relate to our own life experiences. A lot of people see art as a political tool, but I think its value is far greater. The world is an absurd place. As humans we have a capacity to use logic to build, create and explore, and yet we behave in entirely illogical ways. Psychology only takes us so far in understanding the complexity of the human experience. Art allows us an illogical approach, because it is always expandable in interpretation. The "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech has been performed countless times by great actors, throughout history. But it is suddenly new when it is spoken by a new actor to a new audience member- and in live theatre it changes each night. And then it is gone. Out, out brief candle.
This, to me, is the essence of theatre. Creating moments that we can't simply stream when we're bored on a Friday night. Moments that will never be again. It's thrilling and a little bit sad. Just like life. Brief and beautiful.
Making theatre like this takes some courage. This isn't necessarily the theatre that everyone will love. Our recent production of Macbeth had mixed reviews (though audiences seemed overwhelmingly positive about it). I'm sure a play with big sets, musical numbers, high production values, simplistic acting and easy to follow plots and dialogue would make more people happy. Sometimes though, we have to make ourselves happy as artists.
There's the rub.
Princess Leia
Unlike the other two characters on this list I may have more in common with the actor playing the character than the character themselves... often to my own detriment. Though nowhere near as accomplished as Carrie Fisher, I do share some of her struggles with mental health. A passionate artist, talented actor and very funny woman she's easy for me to idolize. Like many great artists, while none of us can truly know for sure, she seems to have lived with a great deal of pain and tumultuous mental well-being, and yet shared a huge and wonderful piece of herself with the world.
That sharing of one's self can be exhausting. Yes, many artists have substance abuse issues as a result of wealth and over-reaching ambition, but a good many are coping with a very honest struggle to maintain their integrity in a world that would crush it. Great art is emotionally draining, say what you want. As someone who has experienced compassion fatigue working in the health and social services field I can honestly say: theatre is harder emotionally.
Princess Leia is an ideal, and her strength, resolve and self-confidence are things to admire- but Carrie Fisher was a human. Flawed and brilliant, and for that I will always admire her. But like so many other artists who lost their lives too young (Vincent Van Gogh, Robin Williams, Jim Henson) the sense that they could give so much of themselves, and never fully appreciate just what they meant to so many people seems tragic, and serves as an important lesson in my own life.
Success
A colleague of mine recently wrote about success on her (vastly superior) theatre blog: https://www.fillingtheemptystage.com/home/2019/1/28/set-it-up-for-success
It gave me some good food-for-thought on setting goals. As she, quite correctly, identifies too often in theatre we make the play the goal itself. But being able to appreciate our success means setting other goals. I became conscious that while I have simple logical goals: "put on a play", I have much loftier, ambitious goals that I often refuse to say out loud: "put on a play that everyone will say is the greatest play they've ever seen", "sell out every show", "become the most famous theatre artist in Canada". Hilarious, self-serving and unrealistic goals swirling in the back of my head. I've never been disappointed at not reaching those goals, I hope that they drive me to work harder and not simply accept "good enough". Weirdly, these unrealistic goals don't cause me as much disappointment as you might think.
More realistically I look back to Kermit. While not singing and dancing, I want 9M to make people happy. A goal which, while admirable is frankly completely out of my control.
I can create all the safe theatre space I want: listen to and respect all of my actor's ideas (even the bad ones), allow for plenty of rehearsal time, communicate constantly, check-in on each actor emotionally, offer my time outside of rehearsal, have snacks and coffee available, show appreciation when actors go above-and-beyond, etc. But however hard I try to make everyone happy, there's just no pleasing some people. Some people are always going to complain, some people are going to be disrespectful, or are never going to get off book or show up on time, or follow direction because actors are human beings. And humans are flawed. It's part of the challenge and joy of directing.
Macbeth was, by most measures, a big success. It had its flaws, but we had great crowds (including 2 sell-outs), strong artistic integrity and many people enjoyed it thoroughly. Strangely though, part way through the run I became very, uncharacteristically unhappy. I'm very prone to depression and was even concerned I was spinning into that rapidly. I realized quickly that I'd put so much energy and effort into trying to make people happy, I hadn't left any space for myself. Then I got angry at myself for doing so. Then I got more miserable. I'm very talented at being depressed.
A few days later and I've realized that it's OK that I was sad and burnt out. Aspiring to make people happy does indeed lead to burn out, and yes: I should know better. But I did what I did, and upon reflection, I'm very happy with the show we created, and I stayed true to myself. That me gets hurt and feels a lot of pain, but that me is also pretty brave and is proud that I put my whole heart into things- even when it's enormously stupid to do so. Because honestly... it was worth it.
If we should fail-
we fail. But screw your courage to the sticking place and we'll not fail.
Many things about art and suffering in Hannah Gadsby's Nanette special resonated with me, but I was particularly touched by her final remarks on Vincent Van Gogh:
I spoke with him about life and fate though. And we talked about how it might relate to our own life experiences. A lot of people see art as a political tool, but I think its value is far greater. The world is an absurd place. As humans we have a capacity to use logic to build, create and explore, and yet we behave in entirely illogical ways. Psychology only takes us so far in understanding the complexity of the human experience. Art allows us an illogical approach, because it is always expandable in interpretation. The "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech has been performed countless times by great actors, throughout history. But it is suddenly new when it is spoken by a new actor to a new audience member- and in live theatre it changes each night. And then it is gone. Out, out brief candle.
This, to me, is the essence of theatre. Creating moments that we can't simply stream when we're bored on a Friday night. Moments that will never be again. It's thrilling and a little bit sad. Just like life. Brief and beautiful.
Making theatre like this takes some courage. This isn't necessarily the theatre that everyone will love. Our recent production of Macbeth had mixed reviews (though audiences seemed overwhelmingly positive about it). I'm sure a play with big sets, musical numbers, high production values, simplistic acting and easy to follow plots and dialogue would make more people happy. Sometimes though, we have to make ourselves happy as artists.
There's the rub.
Princess Leia
Unlike the other two characters on this list I may have more in common with the actor playing the character than the character themselves... often to my own detriment. Though nowhere near as accomplished as Carrie Fisher, I do share some of her struggles with mental health. A passionate artist, talented actor and very funny woman she's easy for me to idolize. Like many great artists, while none of us can truly know for sure, she seems to have lived with a great deal of pain and tumultuous mental well-being, and yet shared a huge and wonderful piece of herself with the world.
That sharing of one's self can be exhausting. Yes, many artists have substance abuse issues as a result of wealth and over-reaching ambition, but a good many are coping with a very honest struggle to maintain their integrity in a world that would crush it. Great art is emotionally draining, say what you want. As someone who has experienced compassion fatigue working in the health and social services field I can honestly say: theatre is harder emotionally.
Princess Leia is an ideal, and her strength, resolve and self-confidence are things to admire- but Carrie Fisher was a human. Flawed and brilliant, and for that I will always admire her. But like so many other artists who lost their lives too young (Vincent Van Gogh, Robin Williams, Jim Henson) the sense that they could give so much of themselves, and never fully appreciate just what they meant to so many people seems tragic, and serves as an important lesson in my own life.
Success
A colleague of mine recently wrote about success on her (vastly superior) theatre blog: https://www.fillingtheemptystage.com/home/2019/1/28/set-it-up-for-success
It gave me some good food-for-thought on setting goals. As she, quite correctly, identifies too often in theatre we make the play the goal itself. But being able to appreciate our success means setting other goals. I became conscious that while I have simple logical goals: "put on a play", I have much loftier, ambitious goals that I often refuse to say out loud: "put on a play that everyone will say is the greatest play they've ever seen", "sell out every show", "become the most famous theatre artist in Canada". Hilarious, self-serving and unrealistic goals swirling in the back of my head. I've never been disappointed at not reaching those goals, I hope that they drive me to work harder and not simply accept "good enough". Weirdly, these unrealistic goals don't cause me as much disappointment as you might think.
More realistically I look back to Kermit. While not singing and dancing, I want 9M to make people happy. A goal which, while admirable is frankly completely out of my control.
I can create all the safe theatre space I want: listen to and respect all of my actor's ideas (even the bad ones), allow for plenty of rehearsal time, communicate constantly, check-in on each actor emotionally, offer my time outside of rehearsal, have snacks and coffee available, show appreciation when actors go above-and-beyond, etc. But however hard I try to make everyone happy, there's just no pleasing some people. Some people are always going to complain, some people are going to be disrespectful, or are never going to get off book or show up on time, or follow direction because actors are human beings. And humans are flawed. It's part of the challenge and joy of directing.
Macbeth was, by most measures, a big success. It had its flaws, but we had great crowds (including 2 sell-outs), strong artistic integrity and many people enjoyed it thoroughly. Strangely though, part way through the run I became very, uncharacteristically unhappy. I'm very prone to depression and was even concerned I was spinning into that rapidly. I realized quickly that I'd put so much energy and effort into trying to make people happy, I hadn't left any space for myself. Then I got angry at myself for doing so. Then I got more miserable. I'm very talented at being depressed.
A few days later and I've realized that it's OK that I was sad and burnt out. Aspiring to make people happy does indeed lead to burn out, and yes: I should know better. But I did what I did, and upon reflection, I'm very happy with the show we created, and I stayed true to myself. That me gets hurt and feels a lot of pain, but that me is also pretty brave and is proud that I put my whole heart into things- even when it's enormously stupid to do so. Because honestly... it was worth it.
If we should fail-
we fail. But screw your courage to the sticking place and we'll not fail.
Many things about art and suffering in Hannah Gadsby's Nanette special resonated with me, but I was particularly touched by her final remarks on Vincent Van Gogh:
My brother (and entire family) have had the compassion and grace to tolerate my artistic temperament for years, to be sure, but it also speaks to why I keep doing theatre. It is an inherently social art form that relies heavily on teamwork, interpersonal relationships and trust. While I take some pride in my artistic merit, I'm equally proud of what I think my actual best directing accomplishment is: pulling together a bunch of weirdos with tons of talent, integrity and passion to go work together and create theatre. I can't make anyone happy, but I can be happy in the knowledge that we share the same dream. And that kind of makes us like a family.