The Director as Collaborator

CHAPTER
4	Directing Elements

 

 

 

A director may have a good sense of what drives a play—what we’ve been calling the core action—but unless he or she can translate it onto the stage in a compelling way, the interpretation may add little to the power of the words and may in fact detract from it. I use the phrase directing elements to refer to fundamental building blocks that help directors achieve their interpretations. Directing elements shape the pattern of a play in production in the same way that a piece of music is shaped by the tones, notes, rhythms, melodies, harmonies, and conductor’s choices, or a painting is shaped by the painter’s use of size, shape, color, patterns, and the relationships among these.

Almost every script ...