Matt Freeman, who is closing in on his first draft of our adapatation of The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen, writes a response to my thoughts here. More thought provocation! Yeehaw.
I think I need to respond to Matt's response, and respond by fleshing out some of my thoughts. i think a lot of what I write here on parabasis can be viewed as being competitive with authors for control over their texts. I think sometimes I am being competitive, but hopefully, in my best of days, when I'm being sincere, I'm not.
I honestly belive that the way for me to work with other artists is for us all to have less individual control over the thing. When I write about how writers should have less control, it is often assumed that I mean that because I think directors should have more. As if it is zero sum. I don't mean that. That's why my musings also include the point that directors shouldn't be omnipotent and that a director's job is to create an environment that allows everyone to be creative.
The director leads the process that creates the piece of theater. They are endowed with the power of speaking for what the play needs. That's an awesome and humbling responsibility, and it is frequently, almost constantly misused and abused. I think it's seriously problematic when directors feel they have to provide the play with everything it needs personally or, even worse, use the play to get what the director needs.
With any luck, In Public will be a good example of this. George asked me six months ago to be fairly aggressive with how the piece is put together, and to not feel constrained by the semi-naturalistic genre of the writing. That's proven a real challenge on any number of levels, including that the script really actively resists and kind of top-down conceptualizing. Everything that comes up has to come organically from the process of creating it. Rehearsals inspire me for what needs to happen at the next rehearsal.
And now that we're doing this, George and I had our first conversation today where he expressed some reservations about a particular choice I had made vis-a-vis one of the scenes. And so we will revisit it and see what the play needs. The play may want something different from what either George or I want as individuals. Or it may want what George wants. Or (probably not) it may want the idea we were playing around with. The play (by which I mean the finished artistic thing we are all creating) is bigger than both of us. Both George and I serve it.
This is a tricky and delicate dance, to be sure.
This is why authorial intent can be such a double edged sword. Not every writer actually has the best interests of what they've written at heart. And just because someone created something doesn't mean they also know how to interpret it. Many do, but not all. Sometimes the piece needs to get away from the writer's idea of what it should be so that it can be something... well... better (keeping in mind that "Better" is of course, subjective). And, especially with revivals of well-known work, sometimes something bold needs to be done to make the thing alive again (Ivo Van Hove has made his career out of doing this).
The same is absolutely true of director's interpretations as well. I've thrown out a bunch of different staging "concepts" for In Public because it wasn't what the play needed (everyone on stage all the time?? WHAT WAS I THINKING??!! Mirrors? WTF??!!).
I don't think in this country we have a real problem of stage directors having too much interpretational power, however. Film, on the other hand, has that problem. There's not a lot of super-creative writing happening in mainstream film. There's lots of purely competent writing, sure, but not a lot of distinctive, interesting screen writing happening (quick: name a screenwriter with a distinctive voice who isn't Charlie Kaufman. if it takes you more than 7 seconds, you've proved my point).
The problem, process-wise in theater is that there is too much focus on the individual (be it the writer, the director or the actor) and not enough focus on the group and what the group is capable of creating.
It's too often about serving the individual interest (i want to make sure this scene looks beautiful so people will think i'm a good director) instead of the collective interest (this scene needs to look awkward and ugly because the moment itself is awkward and ugly). All of us fall prey to this. As a director, I can see it most clearly when writers and actors do it, which is why I frequently post on that. Writers are very good at seeing when directors and actors fall prety to their egos, which is why they frequently post on that. And everyone seems to love designers. As well they should. Designers are forcibly taught to have the collective interest of the thing being created at heart, and it shows in their demeanor, vocabulary ("it wants to be...") and way of working.
Not sure if any of that was a direct response to Matt so much as an expanding on some of what I was talking about. I want to write about the issues of originality, creativity and intellectual property, but obviously not in this post. Perhaps later today or tomorrow!
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