Thoughts On Process

NB: These thoughts are not meant to be in any way definitive or in any way proscriptive, but rather descriptive of thoughts that have occurred to me lately about what is and could be happening in the process of making theater. This is in no way a manifesto...this is not my idea for how everyone should work, these are my ideas about what I am working towards, what I find interesting etc. etc. and so forth. When I wade into these waters, I often find myself in some kind of flame-related altercation with people. Theater is a big umbrella, and there is plenty of room for many many approaches, and I welcome your thoughts on yours as well as your thoughts on mine. If you agree, disagree, or have thoughts provoked or whatever, please leave comments or email me at parabasisnyc at yahoo.com . The primary reason why I am posting this publicly is to have a public conversation about what it is that I am writing. But please, let us keep the conversation civil and non-competitive here, both with me and with each other. Enjoy! (And thanks to Matt Freeman for unintentionally encouraging me to write this by asking me to write more about what I was thinking about process, and thanks to George Hunka for his unflagging willingness to wade into thorny theatrical waters and thus leading the way.)

INTRODUCTION: A METAPHOR

Directing is one of the youngest disciplines in theater. Its conventions and rules and fashions change rapidly as we collectively struggle towards figuring out what directing is, what directors do, and whether or not we have any use for them at all. As a result, we have an enormous number of different views and ideas about what the director’s job even is. Sometimes, discussing these different views becomes impossible; we all use the same arrangements of letters and sounds, thus appearing on the surface as if agreement is possible employing nice comfortable sounding words like interpretation or leadership. Dig deeper and what you find is complete disagreement. Here, as in many cases, description through metaphor can be more helpful. Keeping in mind that pretty much all metaphors will collapse if you push them too hard, I want to explore a metaphor that has worked very well for me over the past few months.

A few months ago, I got into a written argument here on Parabasis with Joshua James, who suggested that the playwright was the architect and the director the general contractor. I tried very hard to persuade him otherwise, instead of just realizing that what that meant was that Joshua wants to work with people who take that view of their role in the process and simply I am not the man for that job. It’s not that the architect-general contractor model is wrong, it’s simply not how I am interested in working. I bring this up simply because I think that Joshua’s metaphor for the director-writer relationship is one that many people embrace, and in raising my own metaphor and contrasting it with his, I mean no disrespect towards (or even really argument with) his ideas, its simply that this contrast helps me to describe what it is I’m interested in.

Allow me to suggest here as our metaphor the idea of the composer/arranger/orchestrator in popular songwriting depending, of course, on the script at hand. Those are three somewhat different but interrelated jobs, and conveniently enough this metaphor allows me talk about my other love besides theater, politics and my girlfriend… songwriting.

Let us start with the first job. You are given a sheet of lyrics and must compose music to go with them. How do you know what is the appropriate musical accompaniment? Sometimes you are lucky, and the lyricist is there in the room with you and can go I want this to feel romantic or I was listening to Wilco when I wrote these lyrics or give you some other helpful hint. They can also help you because, even though they don’t know how to write music, they also can feel in their bones when you’ve gotten in right.

Sometimes in composing your job is to create a platform where the words can be heard simply and clearly, and flourishes on your part beyond that are detrimental to the song. Sometimes, the music is necessary to combine with the words and provide the right mood (this is especially true with humorous songwriting, imagine South Park’s “Up There” done as a song by Talking Heads and you might get my drift).

As an arranger, you have lyrics and chords, or maybe just lyrics and a snatch of melody that your co-songwriter is trying to figure out. David Hanlon, the amazing resident music guy in the Rapid Response Team is amazing at this. I come in with lyrics, some of the chords figured out, maybe a snatch of melody or rhythm and he and I work together and make the song come alive. Let’s say for a moment, however, that all you have are lyrics and chords. Something like this:

A C#m F#m7 E
Baby I don’t see another way

You know the chords, you know the words, but this is only halfway towards figuring out how it is supposed to sound, what the melody of that lyric should be, what instruments should back it up, what the tone is, anything. Maybe you’re lucky and the lyricist/co-composer included in italics at the top a la The Smiths or whatever and at least you have some clues. Time to go listen to The Smiths and think WWMD? or perhaps even WWJMD?

As an orchestrator, you get more of the whole picture, the melody, the chords, the lyrics but now you must expand it into a full song. I remember when Susan Stroman came and spoke to the LCT Director’s Lab about The Frogs and talked about choreographing and how she would say to the orchaestrator (not Sondheim) I need 32 bars for a dance here and he would then go and do it. I forget his name, but he is a key player in how Sondheim musicals are shaped.

So let me suggest that as a director your job is as a composer, arranger or orchaestrator depending on the material you are dealing with, the process you have, your collaborators etc. Why this metaphor works for what I do as a director better than, say, that of general contractor-architect is that the job is creative and interpretive (or rather, its an act of creative interpretation) and collaborative, rather than about figuring out how to implement someone else’s creative vision. At the same time, it recognizes and honors that the text is the starting off point, and the writer (whether living or dead, in the rehearsal room or not) my primary collaborative partner.

I’m going to be writing quite a bit about process, and taking up more space on my useless corner of the interweb to do so. Having this metaphor out in the open will, I hope, make communicating where I’m coming from easier.

Comments

[Josh Costello]

This is a nice metaphor, and well-articulated. Is there a way it could be expanded to include the collaboration that directors have with actors and designers? I feel like as directors we do all the work your metaphor hints at when we prepare for rehearsals and production meetings, and then all our ideas and plans interact with other people's creative processes and everything explodes (hopefully in a good way), and our own ideas grow a whole lot as a result of these interactions.

I'm not a music guy, but maybe the equivalent for that next step is the conductor?

[Lucas]

Interesting. I was talking about something similar last night. The particular music piece that came up was 'Fur Alina' by Arvo Part. The song, as I understand it, is written with notes but no time signature. It is a single person piano piece and different recordings show a surprising level of variation in what is heard. The same notes in the same sequence, but a wholly different orientation towards the piece.

[John Branch]

Not being a director, I don't have very well-defined notions about what a director does, but I think your view is pretty clearly expressed here. I can raise a question, though: do you have a view of the audience's role in the theatrical process? I have a couple of reasons for wondering about this. One, a writing class I had in broadcast-film required our projects to state a purpose and an audience, and I've found it useful to attempt this in things I've written since then. Two, elsewhere in college I heard that one Marxist view of the arts proposes that the audience "owns" the means of production, i.e., the final work of constructing the art experience takes place in the audience members; the theoretical implications of this are somewhat beyond me, but it's easy to see that, for a given show, the experience Mike Nichols would have is likely to be different from the experience Mike Piazza would have. My apologies if this is basically off the track of what you're trying to discuss.

Also, is the Sondheim orchestrator you're thinking of Jonathan Tunick? I remember seeing his name on recordings of Sondheim musicals years ago.

[isaac]

Ah, John, you'll just have to wait for the next installment!

[Joshua]

You're assuming that the general contractor position is NOT creative, which is where I would take issue with your position.

My wife is a talented costume designer and talented (and very much in-demand) costumer draper. She contends that draping is just as creative as designing, it's simply a different job, which is to build what one person has created and make it realistically work.

It's a difficult job, one that takes work and imagination. If something is not feasible in a design, she has to communicate to the designer what and why and suggest alternatives.

Just like writing. But it's a different job. Would a writer take credit for a wonderful lighting design for a show? No. Nor for a costume design or wonderful staging.

I would never posit that any job theatre is NOT creative, nor would I posit that a directors place is NOT creative. I don't even really have issue with your metaphor, to be honest. I think it could work. I have never said that playwrights are the architect's of theatre itself. Playwrights are the architect's of whatever play they wrote. They designed it. The actors and directors and designers and stage managers built it, made it work if at all possible. Each job is valuable.

My issue is that too often director's are given authorship of a play they didn't write once it gets into performance. It's happened to me and to writers I know and I'm sure you've seen it happen, though I accuse no one of that here. I do contend that playwrights are too often marginalized in a community that now reveres directors and movie stars when once the play was the thing. Not only do playwrights not have a union, are well payed or given voice in the rehearsal process, now it seems that the play is less important than the event itself and the playwright is lucky if even invited to a rehearsal or an opening night. We are shut out more and more, and my statement contending that the playwright is the architect of the play was simply to remind everyone that if a playwright hadn't written a play for someone to do, the actors, director, designers and stage-managers, wonderful and creative as they are, would simply be standing around waiting.