Gideon Productions

The Latest

Death of the Bit

Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Everyone has their own directing style, and every actor has the directing style they like best. If you find the right director working with the right actors, it can be just magical, but if you get the wrong chemistry, there is very little hope for success. I've been able to work with all kinds of directors, but there are some that are better than others.

First, there are the "Method-Acting-Teaching" directors, or, as my friend Mac affectionately calls them "Ass-Sniffers". They earn the name because in college, these are the guys and gals that have their casts pretending to be different animals, rolling around outside on the quad, sniffing each other in the ass. Although I'm responsive to these kind of directors, I find that I am also completely happy to make their theater peices suck beyond redemption. If they want me to mutter and climb the rope, I'll do it, but I also might screw up the stage combat bits because "my character would actually hit his character, I'm not gonna fake it..."

The other really bad director for me is the "Real-Life-Questions" director. This is the man or woman who will sit down in a quiet place and wants people to be protected so they can let out their inner voices. This is the director who wants to know what *you* are thinking, not your character, and wants to find something in your real life to filter the character through. Fine, I love talking about myself and God knows I need therapy, but the theater isn't about that for me. I hear basketball players talk about the game as if it was a sanctuary, a place where they can leave the lives inside their heads behind them, and that's how I feel about the theater. Mock me all you want, and I wouldn't say this outside a blog, but the theater is a holy place designed for theater, I really don't want therapy happening there.

Then there are the "Complete-World" directors. These are some of my favorites, although I'm not sure I make good plays with them. These guys and gals are theater-geeks down to their cuticles, they have created full and complete fourth walls for the actors, they know where every single screw is in the set, they know every answer to a lighting or sound design question. Man, I love hanging out with these guys, although the tend to be a little closed off socially.

Another fun director, but one I don't think makes great plays with me, is the "Crazy-Idea" person. He or she will come into a situation with incredibly creative ways of managing problems. This is more than just repeating the line back to the person as a question, this is "giving someone a roller skate and making them hold it in their left hand over the other person's head" kind of solutions. I love these directors, but they don't necessarily *direct* so much as fix mistakes. I find it hard to go from getting it right to being brilliant with people like this.

The last kind is who we are working with now, and it's one of the ones I respond to best. This is the "Bit-Master". He or she is here to direct a play, to create moments where before there were no moments, to give direction to all that happens around them. Our director, John Hurley, trusts the actors, trusts the writing and trusts the technical stuff will go right. But he doesn't trust the audience. He didn't ask us to do anything unless there was a hole in the show, a hole that the audience might get bored during, even for five seconds.

He has turned chunks of this play into *entertainment*. All three of us, as actors, is a bit shy in our own way, when we aren't sure of what we should be doing to make scene play, we slip into different mistakes. My personal crutch is to mug the crap out of a scene. Mac falls back on the words and allows them to speak for him and Jordana focuses on making every single detail correct, just the way we rehearsed. John caresses these bad moments, makes them something more, by giving us something to *do*, something to *act*.

However, it doesn't always work. Last night, we had to put a bit to sleep. At the end of one set of lines, we were in one position on the stage, the next set of lines John wanted us somewhere else. We could just walk over to our spots, but John won't let five seconds of unfunny last in this play. So we did a crazy little dance cross in the original rehearsals, John cut it. Then we did a little fight, John hated it and cut it. Then we did a tiny piece of physical comedy. It worked, our stage manager let out a little chuckle, but the next few lines didn't work.

So, he cut it. It almost caused him *pain* to let a few seconds of down time happen in the play, but he did it.

Tomorrow, we leave for upstate. I don't know if I can update from there, but we will have lots to write about when we get back. Posted at 4:27 PM by sean williams

Gideon Productions

The Latest

Death of the Bit

Archives