The purpose of my online production books was to assist myself, cast and crew during pre-production and rehearsal periods. After the show is over I use webpages for my classes: directing, acting, drama.
SHOWS directory is not fully connected with other pages, but the idea was to turn my productions into some kind of showcases to help acting and directing students. Yes, I posted a few photos, but still didn't collect the notes. Some of the shows have the online scripts. Some plays I consider to direct one day (Hamlet, for example) and I have them online (Cyrano, another script). Of course, I use the texts in class. Use them too, the great plays!
Another goal -- the Virtual Theatre projects and this web-work is breaking the ground. The texts, the notes and the forums.
There are two main entrances to this directory; this TITLE page and Intro, the page I usually keep updated.
I do not have Stage Directing site broken, according to the production cycles, but you can use the Film Directing directory to see all the stages of producing.
The tasks and responsibilities of a director you can find in textbooks on directing; my goal is different -- I want to give you a sense of the artistic challenges and to do it using the concrete texts I worked with.
There are many "3 Sisters" pages in the main "SHOWS" directory, but I haven't move them to The Three Sisters directory, in fear to mess up the links on many pages. If you need more monologues, go there!
DJ XXI Director's Book
Summary
Most of the textbooks are missing the first (or maybe the last chapter) -- the process of the origination of the show, how the mind of director works, the birth of the concept and conceptualization. The idea (and the sense) and the inner evolution of the feeling of the show.
You have to start from the center -- your feelings and your thoughts about yourself, our times, about what is NOT said. You have to be confessional as if you are about to write a poem, a your diary secret. If the future show has a chance to express it -- do it. If not -- forget it!
Questions
There are several Chekhov's one-act comedies I use for class projects in my acting-directing projects (finals): Wedding, On the High Road, Proposal, Bear. [public domain]
2005 updates: Small Chekhov Fall * "Four Farces & One Funeral" -- Chekhov.05 Chekhov's one-acts are updated -- The Bear, The Proposal (1st act -- Oh, Love!), Wedding, Tobacco (Act II -- Ah, Marriage!), but I'm still working on the "funeral" (Last Day of Anton Chekhov). mini-chekhov I am teaching DramLit -- groups.yahoo.com/group/dramlit (subscribe) and see THR215 for subjects, topics, titles.
Spring 2006 -- Waiting for Godot, Beckett -- new pages ( see shows )
... In 1905, theorist-essayist-designer Gordon Craig specified in On the Art of the Theatre that "the directorial function is fully established as the art of synthesizing script, design, and performance into a unique and splendid theatrical event" (quoted in Cohen 1983, 141). In 1913, Jacques Copeau added, "the director's primary task is the faithful translation of the dramatist's script into a 'poetry of the theatre'" (quoted in Brockett 1982, 578). By the 1970s, authors of theatre texts were proclaiming, "the director is the final authority in all matters related to production; he stages the play, coaches the actors, integrates the entire production" ( Sievers, Stiver, and Kahan 1974, 11). In the 1980s, a popular theatre survey called the director's art "conceptualizing the play, giving it vision and purpose, inspiring and coordinating the company of artists on the theatre team" ( Cohen 1983, 138). [ - 6 Interviews, Personal Accounts, Comments By Directors + 7 The Director's Interaction With the Theatre Team ]
8. The Playwright's Role
Oh, dramatists, the true applause which you seek is not the handclapping; it is rather that profound sigh which escapes from the depths of the [viewer's] soul after the constraint of long silence, the sigh that brings relief. [Yet] another impression to make, a more violent one . . . is to make your audience feel ill at ease.
2009 [end] Yes, yes, listen all, actors, writers, directors! Do you have to know the end of your journey before you start walking?
No.
And -- yes. [Remember, "concept" and "vision" magic words]
Talent?
This answer is too easy.
I have to search for definitions, preparing for new exams, only wishing that there will be no "finals"...
I am my own student. I want to be my best student. I have to.
I have to do a lot for "extra credit" without any hope that it will count.
How am I doing?
I have grading.
I do not have do it anymore.
...
There is no organization, only directions... I do not think that my webpages are user-friendly, never mind, readable.
... I didn't bother to spell check my texts (something I demand from my students). I do not have time... and how do I plan to direct the plays in my showcases again? I don't.
I even do to plan to teach them again...
2006: POMO (postmodernism) became old almost immediately after being new. Maybe it was misunderstood? When I teach drama classes I say that Beckett was "the last modernist" (Kronin). At least, French PM philosophy puts PM's beginning at 1968 ("Postmodern Conditions").
1. The Producer's Role -- I am not talking about it at all.
In academic theatre, control of production rests with the Director of the School (or Department) of Theatre Arts, with the financial aspect of the producer role metaphorically replaced by the university's budgetary appropriation. In rare instances, the university may collaborate with an outside entity such as a festival committee or other community group to share financial backing for a particular event. The Director of the School of Theatrue (or Chair of the Drama Department) must assume, with his or her staff, the other production functions--selecting the play, publicizing it, marketing it to advantage. Arrangements for photographs, radio or TV releases, ticket sales and reservations, mailings to subscribers, and preparation of the programs, all fall to the director and School of Theatre staff. With these managerial functions, academia's "producer-directors" also serve as teacher-professors, giving students both theoretical and practical experience through classes and play-production workshops. The academic "producer-director" must shrewdly ascertain what level of drama the student-actors can achieve--with their instructors' experienced tutoring--before an appropriate vehicle can be selected, interpreted, rehearsed, and moved to the university stage and audience. (Luere and Berger 5)
2. ?
...
[ stagematrix.vtheatre.net ]
Theatre Productions & ShowCases
2005: the biggest problem with directing = not spending enough time preparing for the production. How long should director "live" with the script he wants to direct?
In college setting I have a year (we must announce the titles year in advance) for pre-production, but I have to think about the script for years!
Most of the plays I direct I study for decades and taught for years (classics) and, nevertheless, I feel not ready, facing the cast. The answer is because the process getting ready for production must be an active preparation -- and this directory is to make analysis and visions of the future shows more aggressive...
It's only in retrospective the shows' directories could look as an archive, in fact, each was born as a dream of the future.
This is a directory with my most recent shows. I use it for my classes, but the aim should be at PRODUCTION issues. There is DIRECTING directory, of course.
Sorry, if you get some pages with links only (templates); they are there because I know that I have to have them, but I don't have time to work on them.
Bringing it all together? For example, I used Biomechanics as a "method" (acting) for the 12th Night production and as a style for The Importance of Being Earnest (didn't work, although the costumes were to inforce it). How does it reflect in Virtual Theatre (theory from practice)? How to connect the conceptualization with the Directing pages? (Too much work to link everything). How to redirect actors into their path of reading? Too many questions without answers!
I have section "Questions" on all my pages (sometimes they are for me). Also, the Notes. Most of them for myself too.
At first, I did it as everybody else -- for my archives, portfolio and so on. Next, I began to include the notes for upcoming productions -- to help myself (as usual) and my cast and the crew. I love great scripts and since the great playwrights are all dead, I started to included the texts of masterpieces (in the menu, right table, first are the public domain texts, the rest are "textless" -- copyright protected subdirectories). I am using the pages of the shows I directed for my classes: acting, directing, drama analysis. Very handy; monologues, scenes, genre study. So, the textless showcases (like the one I am about to direct Don Juan XXI (translation is copyrighted) are good for directing classes as sample of "concept development" and what director has to do to get the show right.
Oh yes, I have my wish list too, the shows I would like to direct, the scripts I am in love for many years.
How to use it? It depends. There references to this directory on many instructional pages; start from there! See you later.
...
[ updates do not have dates; I do it when is needed ]
PS
Well, the idea was to support the process the teaching directing by having the scripts and the director's notes online. This is the idea. Nice. Cool. How to make it work -- "that is the question."
Only the shows pages with the texts online (3 Sisters, 12th Night, Hamlet, The Importance of Being Earnest) will be developed as the showcases for etextbooks.
NB
When you see "Directing WEBTHEATRE" logo, click -- it will take you back here! Also, I am placing the new banners to my own directories. For example act.vtheatre.net -- to force myself to work on the webpages, where I want to bring together Method and Biomechanics (something I do in my acting classes anyway).
By John Freedman (Moscow Times, Feb. 2003)
Student productions rarely are the object of my attention on this page. They
have an entirely different goal from professional theater. Their point is
neither to entertain nor to be innovative as art. Everything here is geared
toward helping novices find themselves as actors, not toward creating
performances for public consumption.
In my experience, the more professional-looking, the more polished a student
work is, the less chance it has of actually helping its participants grow. I
have seen numerous student shows achieve acclaim and predictions of future
greatness for their casts, but only rarely have I seen those hopes pan out
further on down the line.
"Chekhov: Take 2" -- "Four Jokes + One Funeral", 1904 Anaton's death (new): last day, last hour. Six years since I directed "The Three Sisters" (why now and why the farces?)
Annensky about Chekhov (in Russian, the summer read), I envy the style -- very personal, almost if he himself wrote the play, as if he knows them, Masha, Olga, Irina... The secondary characters became the heroes, the jerks, the types from the comedies -- and we got the tragedy, Beckett only finished this journey.
