2008 Woodie Awards
The Directing Class Showcase: A Close-Up
Elizabeth Fields
Issue date: 12/10/03 Section: Features
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Ranging from the surrealist to the serious, this year's group of thirteen different scenes came from a variety of shows, including Miss Julie, by the 19th-century playwright August Strindberg, and The Diary of Anne Frank, adapted from Anne Frank's diary.
The directing scenes are unusual because they are merely scenes from a production, not a show in its entirety. In the past, the directing scenes have been in the form of a one-act play festival, but this year they returned to the tradition of a collection of scenes. Also, they are produced as the culminating project for the directing class.
In general, students seem to feel that the experience of the directing class has been a positive one.
"We used the class time for different things, but it was very collaborative," said Matisse Michalski '05. "Sometimes we'd have rehearsals in class so that people could watch and give us feedback, or sometimes we'd just go around and have check-ins or talk about what we needed in order to do a better job."
"Everyone supports everyone else," agreed Nicole Cimino '05. "I basically only act, but I figured I'd give directing a shot, and it's been nerve-wracking at times. It if weren't for Jen [Spieler-Curry] and the other kids, I probably just would have cracked."
"It's definitely different, directing for a class, at least in some ways," said Michalski.
"For one thing, you know you'll be graded on it, and that's weird. I've been trying to write down a lot more of my thought processes because I know I'll have to turn it in. But it's also not that different, because you still have deadlines, you've still said, 'This is when this show will be ready to go up.'"
Michalski points out that whether it's for a class or not, the processes of casting and working with the actors and other students is the same.
"It was a good experience for me because I was in the directing scenes as a freshman, with two different directors, and I had an idea of what kind of director I wanted to be," said Michalski. "I had to find a way to set expectations without being mean."
"It also helped that I was able to cast people I had already worked with, so I knew what their personalities were like," Michalski added. "That's something I'd be able to do if it were a regular show, not for a class."
Cimino's experiences have differed because her scene, from the play Bang Bang You're Dead, is the first thing she has directed.
"It would have been very overwhelming if I was doing it alone, so the experience of doing it with other people in a class was good," she said. "But at the end it was just so exciting being able to sit in an audience for once and point to a play and say, 'See? I did that.'"
Of course, not all elements of the collaborative process went smoothly. For the directing scenes, the set and lighting are designed by student designers in the theatre department, rather than by the faculty or students who have been assigned production hours for classes specifically on design.
"When you work with the student designers, there are differences in levels of commitment and the amount of experience of both the designers and the directors," said Michalski.
The simple conflict of trying to get all actors together for a rehearsal can also be frustrating.
"My scene is from a play about a teenager named Josh who loses it one day and kills his parents and five of his classmates, and so my cast was Josh and the five classmates," Cimino said.
"It was a bit nerve-wracking at times, trying to coordinate everyone's schedules. Originally there was supposed to be a seventh actor, who played Josh's grandpa, but that was just way too many people."
For the most part, though, the experience has been both an enjoyable and "totally worthwhile" one, according to Cimino.
"I've already decided that I'm going to take advanced directing next fall," she said. "Now that I've tried it, I'd love to direct a full-length play."