The 12 Biggest Mistakes Directors Make
by Frank Hauser and Russell Reich
Co-authors of ‘Notes on Directing’
This month’s Feature Article, “The 12 Biggest Mistakes
Directors Make,” is reprinted with permission from the book
“Notes On Directing,” co-written by Frank Hauser and Russell
Reich.
Even though “Notes On Directing” was written primarily for
theatre directors, this book contains precisely the kind of
craftsman-like guidance about working with actors that film
students and film directors rarely get a chance to learn – and
from which they stand to gain a lot.
This book is also highly recommended by Dame Judi Dench, Sir
Ian McKellen, Sir Tom Stoppard, and Edward Albee.
—-
Learning from one’s own mistakes is an important component of
getting better at any craft. Better still is avoiding the
mistakes in the first place — recognizing where others have
commonly stumbled and then detouring around.
Here, then, in no particular order — gleaned from observation and
from hard-earned personal pain from which we want to spare all
others — is a compilation of common errors in action or
perception committed by directors of all stripes…
1) Giving emotional directions
Imagine yourself as an actor being told to “be angry,” “be
disappointed,” “be sad,” or even “be awestruck.” Is there a
greater guarantee of an insincere result?
Instead, get the actor’s attention off himself. An action is
not an emotion. Give him something fun and interesting to do.
Occupy him. Vividly describe the circumstances he’s in and the
challenges he faces. Set a goal for the actor. Give him a stake
in what’s happening on stage. Give the actor a task that
involves changing an emotion in someone outside of himself.
Paul Newman once said that the best direction he ever got was,
“Crowd the guy.”
2) Applying style without reason or intention
Elements of style are best applied with intention, purpose, and
meaning — not as ends in themselves.
A character in a Restoration drama, for instance, bows with
open palms extended away from his body to demonstrate he has no
weapons. Ironically, this may also indicate he still wants
them, needs them, or has them hidden somewhere, so beneath the
benign courtesy lies a simmering threat. A woman waving a
perfumed handkerchief desperately as she speaks does it to hide
her atrocious breath.
Without intention, style is empty.
3) Criticizing and bullying actors
Too many directors choose shouting or sarcasm or, worst of all,
imitation to cover up their own ignorance about what to do or
say. They figure if they’re intimidating enough it will keep
everyone on their toes. While this technique will often get a
laugh, it will just as surely make an enemy.
It’s all too easy for an actor to feel he is getting it all
wrong. Rather than criticizing or controlling through
intimidation, try sincerely praising actors early and often.
Instead of correcting them all the time, get into the habit of
frequently telling them what they are doing right. Francis Ford
Coppola reportedly directs this way; he only says what he
likes: “That was terrific!” or “Let’s see more of that!” Let
that be your model.
Also, be sure to tell your actors whenever they look good on
stage. They’ll trust you more knowing you are concerned with
their appearance and dignity, and it will free them to go about
their duties with less self-consciousness.
4) Failing to include all the actors
Surely you know that in the theatre, silence is invariably
taken for disapproval. Be sure to include every single member
of the cast in your note sessions. The exception here is a
critical note that should, clearly, be given in private.
When you make a change, it is not enough simply to discuss a
new idea or change prior to performing it. Even the smallest
business must be walked and spoken through on stage and in
character prior to running it in front of an audience. You
cannot know all the possible consequences in advance. Good
actors do an enormous amount of internal work based on the
circumstances you and the script have set up. If you change
those circumstances you must give ALL the actors the
opportunity to adjust. And don’t forget to include the stage
manager, who will likely be responsible for directing
replacement actors and, in your absence, ensuring the show runs
as you intend it to.
5) Being lazy
No actor likes a lazy director, or an ignorant one. You should
certainly know the meaning (and the pronunciation) of every
word, every reference, every foreign phrase.
Also, be decisive. As the director, you have three weapons:
“Yes,” “No,” and “I don’t know.” Use them. Don’t dither; you
can always change your mind later. Nobody minds that. What they
do mind is the two-minute agonizing when all the actor has
asked is, “Do I get up now?”
6) Using nudity to indicate inner nakedness and vulnerability
Some sincere directors seem to be addicted to getting actors
naked on stage, all the while denying the prurient interest of
it all. It’s all very self-justified, flimsily defended as art.
But beware the naked truth. Earnest nudity imposed by sincere
directors is rarely the reliable conveyer of inner emotional
nakedness and vulnerability they suppose it is.
More typically, when the skin makes its appearance, the
audience is ripped from the world of the play along with the
clothing. The audience is deposited in a prurient inner world
far from the plot. Their eyes no longer watch the eyes, mouths,
and hands of the performers, but are diverted, no, riveted to
other body parts. The audience and the story often become lost
to each other.
7) Mandating the revelation of real life on stage and the
repeatability of dictated, on-the-nose moments
You can’t expect both. If you have skilled actors at work there
will be some variations moment to moment and performance to
performance that make it real and therefore subject to change.
Expect and accept that.
Audiences come to the theatre because live performance — at
its best — can make us feel more connected and alive, as if we
are part of the important and real events occurring on stage
right now. As in sports, it should feel as if anything could
happen at any moment.
Such real and true moments can be a bit messy, unpredictable,
wonderful, spontaneous, dangerous…and very difficult to
repeat.
Rather than exerting your control over it all, dedicate
yourself to keeping the life between actors alive. Don’t
micromanage. Decide what you will allow to live and flourish
without all your potentially damaging or inhibiting
intervention. As Elia Kazan said, “Before you do anything, see
what talent does.”
8) Using technical solutions when acting solutions will do
The problem here is spoiling the audience. Hydraulics and
turntables can solve certain problems, albeit in a kind of
self-conscious and self-referential “look what we can do” kind
of way.
Spectacle has its value, but when we wean the audience from
simple human drama, we commit a kind of suicide. We disenable
the audience, and ourselves, from recognizing basic
person-to-person connections, disconnections, and
reconnections. It becomes instead all about the eye rather than
the ear, about cleverness and money rather than insight and
skill. Remember that the audience has come to the theatre to
believe, to respond to the magical words, “Once upon a time…,”
not to admire a laser show.
9) “Concepting” the play
Directors need to stop coming up with “concepts” that mean
omitting passages which don’t fit, altering an emphasis for the
sake of novelty, or twisting the writer’s overt intention in
order to bring out some hypothetical Inner Meaning.
In other words, directors should be more honest. Lloyd Richards
said that if you continually find yourself itching to make
changes to a script, consider whether you should give up
directing and take up playwriting.
The current fondness for updating texts, Shakespeare, the
Greeks, is basically a form of snobbery: “How amusing! They’re
quite like us!” As if there were anything to be said for
dragging Medea or Hamlet into our appalling time. Contrariwise,
if the plays are well presented in their own period we have the
far more fascinating and educative experience of time travel,
going back across the centuries and finding out how like them
we are.
10) Thinking good art is whatever the audience cannot understand
Too many audiences blame themselves for not following a story
when their negative experiences may in fact be the result of
directing that undervalues clarity. This misguided approach
grows from a romantic and narcissistic notion that great ideas
and those who think them are valued by the degree to which
they’re misunderstood. There are historical precedents for the
suffering genius, but inverting this phenomenon and
deliberately inducing confusion for self-promotional purposes
is hardly the route to winning over an audience.
Confused audiences may be lost forever, thinking theatre and
art in general are not for them. This is a crime.
11) Neglecting the audience
The object of the director’s attention is, lamentably, often
not the crowd in the seats, but someone else: the director’s
idol, a former teacher, colleagues, parents, critics… The real
audience, of course, is the one showing up. They’re paying
money; they’re in the theater; they are ready for an
extraordinary experience. Scratch on a director, though, and
you’ll often find beneath the surface that the last thing he or
she wants is a relationship with this audience. There’s a
slight self-distancing that occurs. When directors do this,
they are not likely to want to give much of themselves to the
audience at all. Directors need to confront their personal
feelings about their audience. To succeed, a director must love
the audience and want only to give to those in it.
12) Lacking self-awareness and acceptance
Young directors often don’t know or accept themselves. This
leads them to imitate the most notable stylist or theorist they
can find…Brecht, Derrida…thinking they will inherit that style
and the critical notoriety that goes with it, without realizing
the unique experiences and struggles that the idols had to
endure to become who they became. Robert Wilson’s life, for
example, isn’t mine and isn’t yours. His unique approach, for
better or for worse, arose out of his experience and unique
personality and inclinations, which can’t really be imitated
productively. Better for the young director to develop a sense
of legitimacy to his or her own experience and inclinations
than try to borrow that legitimacy from someone else.
Obviously, find out how you work best and do that:
paraphrasing, playing animals, improv (short for “improvement,”
not “improvidence”).
Learn more about this book at: http://www.notesondirecting.com
(This material is reprinted by permission from RCR Creative, New
York. Copyright 2003 by Russell Reich. All rights reserved.)
FRANK HAUSER is a retired freelance director living in London.
Born in Wales in 1922, he attended Oxford University during the
1940s; worked as a drama producer for the BBC; and, in 1956,
formed the Meadow Players at Oxford. He was Director of the
Oxford Playhouse for sixteen years, during which many of his
productions were subsequently seen in London and New York. An
accomplished pianist and translator, he has also taught and
directed at the British American Drama Academy, Colgate
University, The Julliard School, and the University of
California, Davis. In 1968, he received the award of Commander
of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.), one of the most
prestigious honors given by the Queen of England.
——-
RUSSELL REICH is a writer and creative director living in New
York City. Born in 1963, he served as visiting
artist-in-residence at Harvard University, artistic associate
at the Circle Repertory Company in New York, member of the
Circle Rep Director’s Lab, and founding artistic director of
the Holmdel Theatre Company. He holds degrees from Colgate
University (Phi Beta Kappa, Charles A. Dana Scholar) and
Columbia University.
Copyright (c) 2004 Peter D. Marshall / All Rights Reserved
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