A DIRECTING PROCESS by Alex Clifton
Extracted from Scene 2006- 07 September Issue 1
A DIRECTING
PROCESS
By Alex Clifton
A play can be staged without a director, just like music
can be played without a conductor. What both directors and
conductors bring is complex to define but simple to
recognise. This is my definition of the job.
The director provides direction. They draw everyone
towards the same compass point. Finally, the director will be
left behind by a team whose shared sense of direction is as
complex to unravel but satisfyingly simple to observe, as a
flock of geese in flight.
The director is a conduit. The director takes a play from
a writer, full of humility and gratitude for that which he or
she could never produce, and gives it over to a group of
actors, full of humility and gratitude to them for that which
he or she could never achieve.
The director is accountable. The director is responsible.
The director’s chief responsibility is to artistic risk and
reward: to astonish; to astound. The director must never let
fear of failure blot this clear objective.
The director is never creative. Discover don’t create.
The director finds things that already exist in the play, in the
characters, in the actors; the director doesn’t try vainly to
create new ones. The director reveals what is already latent;
he or she does not seek to create. Most of all, the director
needs sensitive curiosity.
The director is a plagiarist. Find, inspect, adjust and use
all the best bits that other people have already made, found
or imagined.
Directing is managing fear. The company will expose
themselves in public. The director must redirect this fear
into the energy that will drive the collaboration towards its
shared goal. Do not deny the fear – it exists for a good
reason. Do not avoid the fear – it will only get stronger.
Acknowledge and welcome this fear: it means the company
is afraid of failure; it means the company wants to succeed.
To manage this fear the director defines how this so-soughtfor success will be measured. They communicate a shared
goal, to be recognised and understood by everyone involved.
Fear breeds on ignorance; the director ensures everyone in
the company knows and understands how the target is
shifting and changing during rehearsal.
The director banishes his or her own fear. Or more
honestly, recognises it and keeps it out of the rehearsal
room. A director is not afraid to say “I don’t know”. It is
not the director’s job to know all the answers; it is the
director’s job to find the answers out, or delegate someone
else to find them. The discovery, the exploration into the
unknown – this is rehearsal. To embrace the unknown, and
trek in boldly.
The director trusts. If the director casts well, they know
they have a room of people in whom they can place trust.
The director must give the play up to the actors.
Finally, the director is not needed. The notes dry-up, as
the company makes value judgements of its own which
reflect a shared aesthetic.
Preparation
80% of the director’s success is achieved in casting.
Good directing is great casting. Plenty of directors have
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SCENE 2006-7 September Issue 1
made successful careers out of being brilliant at casting and
mediocre at the rest. And that’s OK, because good casting
is very, very hard.
If they’re alive, I go and sit with the writer and read
through every line of the play, asking all the questions fear
doesn’t want me to ask. With translations, I go to the
original and have a literal translation done. What repetition
has disappeared in the translation? What sacrifices have
been made for the sake of beauty?
I underline every word, every place, every theory, every
reference that I don’t completely understand. Find out who,
what, where, when they are. I immerse in the culture of the
play. Research the communities in it - their rituals most of
all; the daily theatre the communities engage in.
Engage with the twitch that made the writer start this
play. Read, watch, study all sources from which the writer
drew inspiration.
Understanding of dramatic structure is vital to making
informed choices. Unless the director is working in opera,
they conduct the shifting tempi of the play. An
understanding of satisfactory dramatic structure can help –
but a director is never slave to it. It can help, but it comes
with a health warning that it can also predicate
predictability.
Classical narrative structure has four sections: the
platform and its want; the obstacle to that want; the struggle
to pass that obstacle; the resolution following the conflict
with the obstacle. In the platform, the world of the narrative
is introduced and laid out. A character’s desire for
something is introduced here. An obstacle arises to that
want – something or someone is stopping our protagonist
from getting what they want. The protagonist tries to
overcome that obstacle using several different techniques,
which may or may not be thwarted. Finally, defeated by the
obstacle or having overcome it, our story leaves the
protagonist in a world experienced as different and somehow
changed.
Shrek lives on his swamp and wants to be left in peace.
Lots of people are forced to move in to his swamp, providing
a clear obstacle to his want. He has to go and fight a
dragon, save a princess and do some heroic stuff to get his
peaceful swamp back to himself. But en route, he realises
all along he actually wanted someone to share life with on
the swamp, and finds her in the princess and a new best
friend. Together they return to the swamp to live happily
ever after. Until Shrek 2 of course.
This similarly applies to basic scenic structure. Every
scene requires a network of offset, shifting and dynamic
obstacles and wants, or the play is over. The director
ensures that these desires and obstacles are in place for
every character – however small the part. Without them,
the play ends. And the smallest hole in this network of
wants and obstacles will pull the production apart: without a
want there is no direction; without an obstacle to that want
there is no drama. If a scene is not working and I cannot
work out why, I ask everyone what they want, what is
stopping them getting it, and what they are currently trying
to do to get their want. Normally, the
scene is failing because someone is not
sure.
An Approach
Plans are made to be broken;
rehearsal is improvisation. Questions
arise which have never before been
considered. Go in with a starting point,
and delight in not knowing where you
will end.
I wallpaper the rehearsal room with
images from research undertaken with
the actors in the early stages of
rehearsal. Maps, photos, poems,
newspaper articles; it seeps in.
What is it that broadly makes human
beings distinct from animals? It’s more
HS Tarsus
than oppositional thumbs. Make a list
(which will be heavily debated) – faith; humour; recreational
sex; language? Examine what each character’s relationship
is to each of these things. We are examining what makes
the character human. What faith do they hold? What
makes them laugh? What turns them on? Do they have an
accent, or particular language that distinguishes them? Et
cetera.
A dictionary in the rehearsal room is vital. It’s amazing
how many words we’re not really sure we fully understand.
I divide a script into Events, Tasks (objectives), Obstacles
and Actions. These divisions are plagiarised from various
directors – particularly from time spent working with Katie
Mitchell, Phyllida Lloyd and Declan Donnellan, each of
whom use something similar structurally. I will make
tentative divisions myself before rehearsals begin, but not
expect a single one to survive the first week’s rehearsal.
The Event is not dissimilar to Stanislavski’s unit, but is
more clearly defined by character objectives. The Event
marks any moment when every character on-stage has their
immediate objective (what they want to achieve in this
particular moment) changed by something said or done. For
an Event to count, every character has to have their
immediate objective changed. But these moments happen
surprisingly often. Someone walking into the room; a new
subject of conversation being brought up; something seen
out the window; a telephone interrupting a conversation – all
these things probably mark an Event. So Romeo is
recognised by Tybalt at the Capulet’s party, and everyone’s
objective and point of concentration changes. This is an
Event. I title each Event for clear reference with actors –
again it should be simple. In this case, perhaps ‘Romeo is
recognised’.
The event will promote a reaction from each character.
The reaction will promote a Task. The Task (similar to
Stanislavski’s objective) is what each character wants to
achieve in the fall-out of that event. It gives the actor
something clear and simple to play – a directional want. It
should be something tangible and clear, and is often quite
simple; e.g. ‘To make Brutus fear Caesar’s ambition’ or ‘To
make Juliet try and kiss me’.
An Obstacle must always oppose the Task, or the play
will fall apart. So, whilst Romeo’s Task is ‘To make Juliet try
and kiss me’, Juliet cannot have the Task ‘To kiss Romeo’
without any external Obstacle. Without the Obstacle the
play descends into agreement. There must always be a ‘no!’
The play has to retain oppositional forces of tension, which
propel it forwards. So an external
Obstacle to stop them kissing must be
found – here, they are in a public space,
without a place to hide and kiss.
Alternatively, if the director sets the
scene in private, one can find an
internal Obstacle; Juliet could alter her
Task to ‘To make Romeo try and kiss
me’. This offers internal opposition to
Romeo’s Task. Their Tasks conflict: they
both want a kiss, but neither wants to
make the first move. This internal
Obstacle offers a light, potentially witty
scene, which might make room for the
very high emotional stakes later. The
external Obstacle presents more danger
and threat – overcoming it is harder.
The Action is the tactic the character
employs to achieve their Task. An Action is always a verb
and will normally shift several times within one Task. If my
physical Task is to cross a room, Actions will be: to walk, to
run, to crawl, to slide, to roll et cetera, depending on what
Obstacles are in the way. If my Task is to make my wife
forgive me for forgetting our anniversary, I might employ
actions such as to seduce, to make laugh, to flatter, to offer
gifts et cetera. Which Actions I employ depends on the
scale and type of Obstacle blocking my Task’s success.
Innumerable actions can be played on any line.
Events, Tasks and Actions are only useful if they simplify
and clarify. As soon as they become confusing to an actor,
which they invariably do, they must be left behind. For a
while these terms provide a vocabulary through which to
engage with the script. At a certain moment, the character’s
journey and choices will have crept inside the actor, and
here the director must remove him or herself before
becoming a barrier to the actor’s contact with the play.
Observe the actor making their own choices, and comment
on them; suggest and adjust, no longer guide and lead.
Titled Events form an A-Z route-map through the play.
The Tasks provide character route-maps. These act as a
platform for extensive improvisation. Mark the Events in a
scene with the actors, discuss their changing Tasks, and
then allow them to improvise the scene through this
structure. Abandon the writer’s words, and allow the actors
to take the path of the scene, finding their own way through
it. Finally, they will come to the script with the confidence
of real and felt understanding of each choice of words. This
has never been more useful to me than in working with
young people on Shakespeare.
Clarifying Events and Tasks, also reveals Events which
must have happened off-stage for a scene to take place. So
who is this Rosaline that Romeo has been so affected by? A
series of unseen Events are implied. These must be explored
in extensive improvisation, to find the path which has
brought Romeo into this state. I want to know more about
the history of the Capulet / Montague conflict; about the
strange, forced relationship between Lady and Lord Capulet;
about Mercutio’s wild, dangerous, self-destructive drive;
about so much in this play. How to find it out? Ask the
actors to show it, to improvise the scenario.
These are the techniques and approaches that I bring to
a rehearsal room. They invariably change at the
point of contact. The director and his or her ideas
are just a client to the actors, writer, play, audience.
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