A production of Dream On!

Directing

Directing is an interesting and rather complex notion. At a glance, you'd assume it to be rather simple, an easy enough task if you've got a bit of vision and a cast that'll listen - not so. To be completely honest, the majority of the time you’re floundering around without any real plan, pretty much making it up as you go along.

Basically, you end up making lots of different plans that are constantly changing and adapting as you go along.

Multiple people in charge - multiple visions

When you are co-directing, or there are multiple people in charge, it is inevitable that you should come to clash over at least certain subjects in certain areas. Sometimes you’ll have alternative opinions, and at other moments you feel as though you’re thinking along the same lines and instinctively have the same notions of what is the best next move, or the same vision.

Thank goodness for hierarchy, otherwise nothing would ever get done. This way there’s always someone who gives in without too much struggle and conflict.

The decision to change someone’s role

This decision is not an easy one.

I’ve participated in many plays myself, and I know the joy and prideful feeling that rises within your chest when you’re confided a large, important role to play. I know how upset it would make someone to have that suddenly removed from him or her, and how they may then be tempted to drop out rather than suffer the humiliation if they’re particularly sensitive. I’ve seen it happen before. I also know that some people just need to become confident in their role and get into their strides before they blossom into their character and often make some of the best members of the cast.

But then there’s the possibility that they won’t and the entire show then becomes stale because of them. Sometimes, you need to change them before giving them the chance to get settled, because otherwise it’s too late.

Oh the difficult decisions of a director…

Cast

Your cast is, I have learned, never exactly as you have imagined. In fact, they’re probably a hard cry from the original image of the characters you’ve carefully illustrated in your head.

You get to know them surprisingly quickly, and rather well too. When you see each other on an almost daily basis, you get to see them in all their moods, when things are going well and when life sucks. Acting on stage, particularly when you are learning a script and getting used to your character, makes you extremely nervous and it is a stage in which you’ll find yourself incredibly vulnerable. As a director, I am witness in these moments of insecurity, and a word can boost or destroy their confidence. The funny thing is that this power comes with the title of director, and even if you’re inexperienced they’ll look for you for guidance as if you have all the answers. It’s as though suddenly you’ve become the teacher, and your cast turns to you and listens. At first I did a double take, and it certainly takes a moment to adjust.

But your cast, well, they sort of become yours. You want them to succeed, and you grow to care about each of them – regardless of ability or age.

Their success is my pride; their failures, my pain.

Strange how the world works.

You’re vision versus what your cast will produce

Every actor brings their own personal flavour to their character, and there is nothing you can do but work with it. You can’t change your cast’s personality, cultural background or natural reactions when placed in certain situations, so the best thing to do, it turns out, is to go with it. You have to let go of that premature vision of the final presentation, and succumb to the inevitable changes (both good and bad) that your actors bring.

If you try to fight it, you will drown in your own tears of frustration. If you accept it, and keep your plans modifiable, you will be able to mould them to your desires.

I’m so proud of my mechanicals!

Frankly, the first rehearsal I went home and sat morosely in my bed for close to half an hour, curled up between the pillows thinking ‘Oh my. What on earth am I going to do?’

They’ve come a long way J

My mechanicals. Yes, they’re certainly my group, and I’m really proud of the improvement they’ve shown in barely two weeks. After an unforgiving and immediate shuffling of roles, they needed a moment to regain their footing, but now they have.

Ian has slipped into the role of an arrogant Nick Bottom with a suspicious ease, and although he has the diva down to a T, he needs to work on being more dramatic and not hesitate to make a fool of himself. If you do something dumb halfway, you look stupid. If you put your soul into the action, you’re funny.

Srijan is a riot, and he’s just a ball full of energy for such a little guy. He’s playing Thisbe (Francis Flute, I believe), and he adds life to the stage as long as he remembers not to wander off.

Camilla is growing in confidence in leaps and bounds in her role of Peter Quince, and I’m particularly proud of the way she’s taking control of the group on stage when the role was thrust upon her young and rather unprepared shoulders. She learns her text with astounding dedication and I am proud to say that she has risen admirably to the occasion.

Amisha is also doing very well in her role, but needs to not be afraid to take over the scene and steal the spotlight.

Paul just needs to ensure that he doesn’t overplay it, but his enthusiasm is gladly welcome. His accent adds to his roar :p

And Adithya… well, he needs to decide if he really wants to be here, and if so needs to pour his soul into the performance. If not, well… he’s the only one I won’t shed tears over if he goes.

A stage outline

I made this, it's a basic layout of the space we'll hopefully be able to use for the production :)

Kicking someone out

It’s not an easy thing to do I’ve discovered – in fact, you feel pretty much like an evil beast praying on some poor innocent and breaking their spirit. Well, at least that’s what I’d have felt like if you’re not so sick of the person that you’re really secretly quite gleeful to have an excuse to tell them they should no longer bother to come to rehearsals (not that he was actually coming in the first place, mind you).

Adithya wasn’t showing up regularly for rehearsals, and then came to me before clubs (well, actual Ian dragged him up) and said that he had to take remedial Spanish classes during clubs now instead. I made the decision on the spot – it was something I’d been mulling over for a while but I’d been hesitant to outright kick someone out. But now that I had the perfect opportunity to ease him out gently, I jumped on it. I first asked him if he really wanted to be in the play, and he responded with an “I’m not sure.” That cut off any and all last hesitations, and I explained to him that if he couldn’t show up during the club periods, while of course school work is more important, and he wasn’t showing up at rehearsals it seemed to me that he just really didn’t have the time for participating this year. Perhaps next year he’d have the opportunity (and it’ll be someone else’s headache to deal with his near lethargic personality – I’ll be in IB2 and won’t be directing). *Innocent smile*

He understood.

In hindsight, I’m really glad I was the one to do it (although the others all seemed mildly surprised when I informed them that I’d kicked him out – I’m the ‘nice’ one, after all) – Mats would have probably been very blunt and hurtful; that’s not the goal.
I even got Rattan to agree to replace him as Snout… We’ll just have to wait and see how he fits in with the rest of the Mechanicals… I do love my mechanicals J

Being put in the spot completely unprepared

Yesterday I had quite the nasty surprise – we went upstairs for club period, the only time of the week so far that the entire cast meets up together, and Mr. Lawrence wasn’t there. We hadn’t been warned – didn’t have a plan.

And of course everyone looks towards us to take control.

*Gulp*

I got first hand experience of what it’s like to suddenly find yourself thrust into the spotlight, unprepared and with people gazing up at you expectantly: you feel like you want to do two things – a) kill the person who’s fault it is that you find yourself in this position in the first place, and b) sink into the floor and disappear before panic seizes you.

Mallika started the meeting, we improvised by having everyone go over the song we’d rehearsed last week, and then she completely lost her temper, so I felt I had to take over since she’d already had a long day. We ran scenes 1 to 3 after that, and I sent the backstage people outside with a wide-eyed Jed, who was soon rescued as I sent Mats to join them once he appeared.

After the rehearsal I sunk down into the couch, the panic at having just screwed everything over and that after all I’m really a terrible director and I shouldn’t be doing this, I have very little experience and what the hell was I thinking, Srini came up and complemented me at being a great director, followed by Sid and then later at lunch Adele. I almost melted in relief and happiness; they’re just so sweet. My first reaction was to laugh though – Srini just happened to start talking as soon as I’d began to freak out on Mallika. J

And then, when I told everyone that there was no rehearsal at lunch today, Paul looked at me and his face just fell, and he actually said, “Oh.” Looking disappointed! That made my day J, and gave me the ego and confidence booster that I needed. There’s nothing like a little panic to destroy your growing confidence – and nothing like your cast showing support and enthusiasm to bring it all flooding back.

During a run through of a scene

During the general, improvised run through of scenes 1 to 3, I followed the example of one of my previous directors, Ms. May Marian, and hastily grabbed a pen (well, it happened to be a large, green felt-tipped marker; but hey, I was improvising), and a piece of paper, and tried to take down a couple notes on each of the actors in order to give them feedback. Ironically, the first play I ever did with Ms. May Marian was also a musical, and the second was also a Midsummers’ Night Dream (although using the original text, boy that was fun – and I’m not being ironic here) – and the last one was Tom Sawyer. But that’s beside the point at the moment.

I discovered that it’s actually incredibly difficult to keep up with everything and watch everyone individually while the scene plays out – you’re always slightly behind. Every so often you’ll get this urge to just yell out, “STOP!” To try to fix something that for you is an obvious error but that you must remind yourself that there is no reason they should have any prior knowledge of the concept. And you need to know everyone’s name! I mean, I’m working on it, but that is NOT one of my natural forte areas.

I did manage to give specific feedback to most of the cast at the end, but I also felt slightly awkward doing it, as frankly some of them are older than me, and have more experience than myself, but… well, nobody seems to hate me for it (yet), although a few did seem a little taken aback.

Learning your lines… WHY does no one ever do it?!

There were four general things that I deduced from watching the first run through of scenes 1 to 3:

1)  Everyone needs to speak louder. And I mean, like 6000000 times louder.

2)   Everyone seems to have this terrible habit of turning their backs to the audience, and that when you’re speaking to another character, it seems that they all think it’s imperative to turn 90° to face them! Nobody seems to ever stop to consider that it’s the audience that needs to see you – not the other members of the cast.

3)   They have a very bad space-occupation intuition. They tend to clump together, stand behind pillars and cover each other, constantly upstaging one-another. *Face-palm*

4)   The songs. I can’t stand most of them, frankly. Very few members of the cast ever seem to actually bother to float on tune, and the whole cacophony of noise that’s created is just plain and simply painful. We need to find different tunes to go with the words, before my head explodes from a migraine or I burst into tears. We need a music teacher – badly.

Why do I get myself involved in everything?

It seems almost as though I’m doomed to become involved at least a little bit in every aspect of putting together this performance. And it’s completely my fault J

It’s almost as if I can’t help but want to be involved with everything – truth be told it stems from the fact that I’m just honestly curious about every aspect of putting this thing together… I’d like to imagine that that’s a good trait for a director to have, to be concerned about the play in it’s entirety and not just the blocking of the actors, but I may just be annoying to the others. So far they’ve been patient with me and seem to assume that I’ve got the right to ask simply because I’m “assistant director”. Sounds silly to use a title for that, but maybe there’s some truth and I’m doing the right thing. I can’t imagine blocking a scene if I’ve got no concept of the set, costumes and lighting that will be coming into play…

Maybe I am doing the right thing after all J

Costumes: different approaches and visions

There are two types of reality: the ‘real’ world we live in everyday, going about our rather currently hectic lives as IB students, and then there’s the “theater” world.

Some people seem to have difficulty drawing that distinction.

Rhean and Jessica have some great ideas for the costumes, but they both seem to be reaching for perfection, with lovely images of well sown, creative costumes fitted perfectly upon each of the actors.

I have a more… realistic approach, perhaps gleamed from several years of experience and observing. Four words: Beg, Borrow, Buy and Steal.

Safety pins, quick stiches back stage, duck tape.

Improvise, and be creative – you have to be willing to adjust your ideas to fit the resources that you have.

And your first place to look: your cast, and their wardrobes.

Integrating a new piece into the puzzle 

Today I actually arrived after the mechanicals to the rehearsal, to my dismay – Mallika had convinced me that I really needed to go eat something, instead of skipping lunch yet again. Ugh, I felt bad – but they’d started without me (I SO love my mechanicals!) and then a little later Rattan came over and we slipped him into scene two.

He seems to fit in well enough, and certainly adds more life to Snout than Adithya ever did. The rest of the mechanicals were a little taken aback at first since he added another very present presence on stage, but they seem to have quickly adapted to welcome him in.

I think this will work out just fine J


What to do if people don't show up?

This is a very difficult situation, and evokes feelings of frustration and annoyance that seem to seep into your soul and fester there.
The thing is, there is actually very little that you can do. Sure, you can berate them gently (or not so gently) for not having turned up, reminding them that they made a commitment - but that won't actually change the fact that they didn't come; and you have no means to force them to do so either.
They're not paid actors, they're volunteers.


My choice to still participate in the soccer tournament

Yesterday we started an in-house soccer competition, with a few of us girls participating with the guys and mixing into their teams.
Now I know that we've planned a couple of rehearsals on friday afternoon, but I frankly couldn't resist signing up anyways - it's only monday and fridays after school, and I've been dedicating every single spare moment to this production. I need a break, and I need something I can do to get away and forget in the heat of the competition all my worries about the production, just for a while.
I do have a tendency to over think things at times, and a break is usually very beneficial, giving me the chance to take a step back and think logically instead of letting my emotions cloud the floor. It's also important to know when to stop - in all the aspects of this performance. The actors are not professionals, and so you can't expect broadway quality results - you can only expect them to try their best, nothing more, nothing less. Likewise, we do not have an unlimited budget for costumes, props and sets - beg, borrow, steal and buy. Your plans have to remain flexible and able to adjust on a moments notice - things fall through all the time. The key is to know how to keep going, and to have a multitude of back-up plans ready to call upon.


Choreography

I had the pleasure of experiencing another one of those sudden, "you're in charge, and don't have a plan" moments. Luckily, this time Mallika was in the spot with me... It's much easier to make something up on the spot when there's two of you, provided that you get along and can work together, of course.
We were only instructed to choreograph the new prologue dance with the new music. All those improve exercises at EABJM are really proving to have been not only fun at the time, but also worth their weight in gold.
I guess a good director needs to be a decent improv actor - you're certainly put in unexpected situations more often than you would really care for.


The sets are coming along....

(insert pics)


Working on the Donkey head

I started modeling the chicken wire for the donkey head today - odd fact, the chicken wire here is very flexible. I'm not sure it'll hold up too well, but we'll see. I'm not master sculptor, but I'm relatively satisfied with my handiwork - although, for some odd reason he looks a little more like a warthog than a donkey. A sort of odd 'wartkey' breed. Haha, never mind.

It's been a while since I've tried my hand at paper mâché, but thankfully it still works :) The trick apparently is not to get it too thick. Unfortunately, I had a lot of helpers all of a sudden, and the first time we did it the entire neck portion fell off. 
Eventually, we got it to stick right. Advantages to living in India: it's hot, so paper mâché dries pretty fast. We did it in three parts (1st time half of it fell off, second time to fix that, 3rd to patch any remaining holes). It's not perfect, but I think painted and with a pair of sunglasses, it'll look decent :D


Costumes *don't look now*!

Other than Bottom's head, of which I've sort of taken charge, I am trying to live in blissful ignorance of our rather desperate costumes situation for as long as possible. Maybe if I just pretend it isn't there, it'll go away and everything'll suddenly be fixed...
Ah well, one can dream, right?
The problem is that there's no plan - no, sorry. The problem lies in that there are a lot of plans - just no action being taken.
I'm just not going to think about this right now.


Snapped

The other day during rehearsal, I snapped.
And now I feel terribly guilty for it.
I was working on blocking a scene, and had had a rather long week (though this is no excuse). The thing that set me off I think was that my sisters were part of the cast I was attempting to direct - as a side note, I hope that you never have to try and direct your siblings. It can be very... challenging, to say the least. My twin sisters approach the situation in different ways - Madeleine acts bored on stage, outright ignoring me or just being blatantly rude and sloth-like. Adele, on the other hand, talks back and argues about my directions. This on stage, coupled with their constant complaining at home about this and that relating to the play had me ready to pull my hair out. And then add to that the chatting - not whispering, or soft talking, but loud, noisy talking - so loudly I couldn't even hear the actors on stage speaking. Needless to say, I turned around and yelled at them to shut up.

I still feel bad about it though.

I'll bring candy to the next rehearsal as an apology.


The ultimate threat...

Mr Lawrence pulled out an ultimatum. Either we have a full run through (no scripts!) by friday, or he wants to pull the plug.

My mental response: WTF?! NO WAY!
We've worked so hard on this, we can't stop when we're so close to finishing! Why?! WHY?!
I just... I just don't even know what to say. I mean, that's just crazy - you can't just stop. Not when we've spent so much time on it already! Ok, no, it won't be a Broadway quality performance, but still! That's not the point! It'll be a fun, good effort put together by the cast - everyone's spent so much energy dedicated to make this work... I haven't just eaten and hung out during lunch with my friends in almost a month! How can he possibly even imagine stopping now?!


We're on!

Invitations to buy tickets have been sent out!!

It's official - we're on!! We have a show - two nights actually - next week.. whether we're ready or not!

What skills did you acquire or develop during the rehearsal?

ª Patience: Patience is indeed a virtue. Working with a cast who never seems to be bothered to memorize their script, who comes late to rehearsal and who repeatedly perform the same errors time after time certainly tries your patience.

ª To be flexible: Things very rarely go according to plan. Thus, it is a necessity (if you wish to survive) to be able to adapt at a moment’s notice. To know when to let go of your original thoughts, and modify them to your cast and your resources is vital – you have to learn when to let go.

ª Organization: IS IMPORTANT! If you are not organized, the result is very simple, and rather predictable – nothing gets done.

ª Collaboration: You must learn to work with those around you. If you are constantly fighting amongst yourselves, you will never move forward. Everyone has to be willing to give a little, modifying his or her visions and ideals to form a coherent, group consensus. And there are times when you have to simply accept another person’s wishes if they are your (ex) director – after all, someone has to make those final decisions, and it can’t always be you.

ª To project vocally: The cast is noisy. Loud, chatty and oh so talkative when offstage, waiting for their turn. However (oh the irony) their voices all seem to drop a notch or three when they step on stage *sigh*. There are times when it is impossible to obtain silence or attention without raising your voice, simply striving to be heard above the general brouhaha in the room. Hence, your ability to project increases.  

What activities did you enjoy or find useful in the learning process? What activities did you not enjoy or not find so useful?

ª Interpreting the “learning process” mentioned above as the entire process of putting together the production and adjusting to the role of assistant director, I have to admit that we did not actually perform many “activities” as such. There has been a large amount of blocking, costume and set designing, as well as running scenes and lines, but very few “activities”. We have chosen songs, worked on choreography, and held auditions; all of which were necessary parts of the process of putting together the performance, and all of which were very educational and rather eye-opening in terms of the work and commitment required.

ª What did I enjoy? I enjoyed the blocking with my mechanicals – I think there’s something to say for the idea that working with smaller groups is useful and easier. I enjoyed the choreography with Mallika – music adds another dimension to the performance, and seeing a successful combination of steps thrilled me and will enrich the performance.

ª What did I find not so useful? The time wasted blocking scenes when we were missing cast members involved. If we’d simply waited, and worked on choreography (for example) instead, it would have been a much more productive use of our time since we just had to restart from scratch once the other performers came.

Comment please on the amount of homework, the deadlines, and the type of homework that was set. Was it fair? Useful? Did it assist in your learning and understanding?

ª The amount of homework: I’ll admit at times it has seemed like a lot, but if you pace yourself correctly and update your drama journal regularly, you can avoid being overwhelmed. The drama journal will be extremely useful for our mock IPP, so in that sense it is time well spent – and it does allow you to reflect and take the time to think about your progress, and things you are doing vs. things you should be as an assistant director.

ª The deadlines: similarly, if you don’t leave anything to the last minute, there are rarely any nasty surprises that await you. Yes, it does mean you have to work regularly – and somehow, it adds up that I probably do more work for theater than I do even for Biology (which is slightly insane when you think about it). But oh well. Once again, it’s fine as long as you can pace yourself.

ª Type of homework: the most challenging aspect of the assignments (in general) was that they all are long, and require you to think (which can be challenging after a day as an IB student). However, they are generally interesting, if perhaps lacking in more clear guidelines or an example to structure you response on at times.

What new knowledge and understanding have you acquired during this term? Please be as specific as possible.

ª I have learned many things, some of which cannot simply be written – skills such as patience and collaboration have been tested and enhanced. However, I would say that I have learned:

·      The cast will not learn their text if you do not push it

·      The cast will speak loudly offstage, and then they’re too quiet on stage

·      Big dreams and ideas are good, but you have to remain realistic (particularly in regards to costumes and sets)

·      You have to be able to adapt at a moment’s notice when things fall through

·      Don’t give up, have faith that things will pull together

·      A hungry cast makes a grumpy cast – Food is important.

·      And much, much more.

If you feel your learning could have been better, please provide positive suggestions for improvement.

ª We needed more time to prepare the performance – in all honesty; third term was a terrible time of year to endeavor such a feat, as there is already so much going on. That would have greatly reduced our stress levels, I think.

         Our actors are, first and foremost, amateurs. Some are little divas in the making, others here for fun or because their best friend decided to participate. A select few have previous stage experience, and there are a few who seem still unsure how they’ve ended up on stage.

         Therefore, it’s only logical that one can hardly expect a Broadway quality final production – that’s simply unrealistic, not to mention unfeasible in the allotted time frame of barely two months.

WE DID IT!!!

It's probably one of the most amazing feelings in the world to watch your own production. I'm so incredibly proud of my cast - besides the sheer satisfaction of watching Camilla progress from shy and quiet, slightly stuttering and unsure, to a confident girl taking possession of the stage – or Srijan, that incredible ball of constant energy able to focus enough to get his lines out, so immersed in the moment that he’s nearly brought to tears because he’s dropped his mike or missed a que... The performance means something to them. Paul, who was timid now happily making a fool of himself; Adèle, my sister who used to be so quiet and never voiced her opinions comfortably yelling when she deems it necessary. I could go on forever. The point is, I’m extremely proud of the entire cast – each and every one of them has made progress in leaps and bounds – and not everything is reserved for the stage.

Watching the play, I found myself unable to stay still. I was probably just as nervous as the cast members, if not more. 
I’ve been involved to some degree in practically every aspect of the performance, so in order to keep myself busy I helped Alina with the sound during the performance. The added benefit was that I got to watch the final production, and see what all the stress, worry and effort amounted to. 

The lighting, sound and props - tied together with the costumes, helped immensely and just really tied everything together. I still can hardly believe that we've pulled it off. 

There is no “perfect” performance, or end result. There will always be last minute problems, things you wished you could have changed, and mistakes made on the night. No two shows will ever be the same either. Hopefully, the variations remain minimal – the energy level of a particular character, the rhythm of the lines delivered, or a prop forgotten here or there. Each performance holds their own unique beauty, born out of the actor’s effort and dedication, and their relieved and elated smiles at the end of the night.

I was so incredibly proud of my cast that night, both of them, to be honest. It’s amazing to be able to watch the final product – your construction, your baby – come together. To see your actors succeed… it’s addictive. And it means so much more to you than to anyone else sitting in the audience and watching the show. You’ve struggled with the cast every step of the way; you’ve seen and can truly appreciate just how far you’ve all come, together.

          

            At the very end of the end of the show, a couple of the cast thanked me. “We couldn’t have done it without you.” I cannot explain just how much that truly means at in the moment.

            I’d do it all again in a heartbeat, though perhaps one day there’ll be a show where I’m the only director. But I’ve still got a lot to learn J.

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