3.1: Contemporary Directing Practices- Thinking Conceptually

There are as many approaches to directing a play as there are directors directing plays today. Despite this great variety in contemporary directing practices, there are some overarching steps to directing that are, if not universally shared, at least generally agreed on. Of these practices, arguably the most important aspect is the development of the director’s concept. The director brings their concept of the play to the actors and designers as a starting point for their collaboration. A director’s concept is an idea of the play’s dramatic action married to a central unifying image. At a fundamental level, the director needs to interpret what happens in the play and be able to communicate that interpretation to the actors and designers in a visual way.

To understand a play’s dramatic action, directors analyze the script, asking themselves what is the change that occurs to the main character. Directors should be able to express a play’s dramatic action in a short, clear sentence. For example, in Terry Guest’s Magnolia Ballet (2022), Z, a young Black man, comes to terms with his sexuality and the ghosts of his past in a magical, gay fantasia. This simple sentence summarizes the plot or the series of connected events in the story, but it also provides a point of view on the story. It’s not the only way that a potential director could summarize the action of Magnolia Ballet. Instead, it offers a window into the specific way that director Mikael Burke views that action. Another director might interpret the dramatic action differently. Rather than focusing on the magical aspects of the play, another production might instead highlight Z’s journey from innocence to experience.

One way to think about a play’s central image is to imagine the poster advertising the production. How does the poster tell the story of the play in one image? In the case of Magnolia Ballet, the poster depicts playwright Terry Guest as Z dressed in a beautiful ball gown holding a magnolia flower while Apparition, the ghost of his ancestors stands behind him. His father looks at him over his shoulder with his back turned as a cabin burns in the distance, a memory of the family’s enslaved past. This conceptual image provides a jumping off point for the collaborations that will follow. That image of the burning cabin might cause the actor playing Z to think about the legacy of chattel slavery. They might begin to build their character around Z’s struggle to break traumatic cycles of violence. A lighting designer might interpret the same image as menacing and they might design lights that tell that part of the story. The set designer might be attracted to the charred cabin and create a set that emphasizes decay, and so on. The director’s concept knits these various artistic interpretations from different production roles into a cohesive artistic whole.

For example, several years ago, I witnessed a production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at The Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) in Washington, D.C. Perhaps the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet tells the story of two young lovers from warring families who try to overcome their families’ strife with tragic consequences. As a life-long theatre-goer, I have seen Romeo and Juliet perhaps a dozen times in various iterations from a middle school production set in the 1920s to a professional production that inexplicably staged the central battle between the two powerful families, the Capulets and the Montagues, as a fight between rival garbage collectors who tossed bags of dog poop at each other. These productions have stayed in my mind for various reasons, not always because they were successful interpretations.

The STC production, directed by Associate Artistic Director Alan Paul stuck with me because its concept was crystal clear and led to holistically integrated production. Something was always happening on stage. I could understand and follow what was happening. In the program handed out to the audience as we entered the theatre, Paul laid out his vision for the production, arguing that the play is about two parties, one that happens at the beginning where the titular characters meet and one that doesn’t happen at the end, Juliet’s wedding to the ill-fated Paris. From that simple statement of dramatic action and central image of the upscale party, a conceptually integrated production emerged. The set designer created a contemporary party venue with red velvet carpets and a DJ booth. The sound designer pumped a soundtrack of club hits through the house speakers. The costume designer made both sides appear as if they were wearing rented tuxes. The lighting designer broke out the disco ball and the hazer. The famous prologue, “Two houses, both alike in dignity,” was delivered by an actor who entered while vacuuming the party venue. Reflecting on the set, director Alan Paul stated, “I’ve seen this play done so many times on a completely gray set and I thought that was always an odd choice because it is about passion, and blood, and violence, and heartbreak, and the extremes of emotion. So, we have decided to put it on a set that is almost entirely red” (Paul 2016). Without explicitly stating the message, Paul conveyed much about how the play remains a contemporary indictment of privilege, violence, and family dysfunction. A good concept can rescue even a dusty old classic and make it feel fresh and new.