– Theatre was once and can be a forum to present the news of the day. Newswrights United posited themselves as this, but their process of exploring a given topic turned into too lengthy and herculean an exercise to be a reliable methodology for this purpose. It still can be done regularly if the production expectations were scaled down. A group (especially a group of improvisers or sketch comics) could do this as a fly by night weekly or monthly exercise with minimal production value if they didn’t take themselves and their material too seriously.
– So many scripted or choreographed projects face pressure in boiling their weeks/months long process into a single, short production that can and often is quickly misinterpreted or underinterpreted. This to me emphasizes the importance of making your work clear enough that the audience will see and understand as much of what you want them to see as possible the first time around. Being vague is not an affordable luxury for the artist with a real message.
– Performing artists worry a lot about the visual in their work but not the emotional tones of their work. This lends value to keeping the physical elements (blocking, choreography, scripting, etc) simple. The more complex those elements, the more difficult it becomes for the performer to allow the valuable undertones to come forth.
– Directing is most challenged when limited to certain parameters, but it strengtens through practice your ability to work with what is available.
– Directing with clarity takes significant, focused and engaged effort in that you want to make your intentions clear but you also want your performers to remain fully open, creative, expressive and generous with their work.
– Giving feedback is important, and so is giving it in manageable, digestible doses.
– Be willing as a director to accept a performer’s product that is not what you had envisioned. This is not required and you are free to sculpt what is given, but what the performer gives you may be different and there is value within many of those differences.
– Is moving into a shape of memory a two step process? Moving first into the shape of movement, then finding the sense memory that fully forms the shape of that memory?
– Movement: A form of emotional and mental brainstorming?
– Sense memory and associated movement can evoke a topic for exploration.