This week in Reflexivity

I am really excited about the possibilities for my paper at this point, and am finding more and more in the readings that I think will help inform my paper. This is all great news.

As far as rehearsals go, this heightened awareness that I am carrying around with me is really changing my work, and in positive ways. I am by nature attracted to scripts that contain great ambiguity, that show the conflicted nature of our species and the ever-present complications of our relationships - to ourselves, others and ideas. This has always been a challenge, since I was also taught as a director that you have to be not only "in charge" but organized on on-point to an extent that has created a paradoxical space between the way I work and the material I typically choose to work with. This has in the past meant that I have walked into a process with a lot of restrictions in that I have already analyzed a script to an extent that I have a clear line of what I believe is going on in the text and where I want to go step-by-step to the process to get there. This has not allowed for the most collaboration between my actors and myself as is possible when I approach things from a slightly more open, reflexive position.

Neil Labute, author of reasons to be pretty, paints pretty complicated and conflicted characters. In one way, none of his characters are the most likable people and often their actions can be relatively "ugly" (so there's some irony in his title). So through my traditional approach to my work I am removing a lot of that ambiguity going into process by my attempt at coming into rehearsals with a high degree of certainty, then spend a lot of time trying to sell everyone else on my vision.

This process has already been one that has had me asking far more questions than I normally do. And not in some Socratic manner where my questions are not really there to be answered but to subtly lead. I am far more open, receptive and interested in what the actors who are physically and mentally embodying these characters think and are discovering in the moment, and the results, I believe, are more rich than me simply simply transmitting direction towards a predetermined ending point.

This is not to say that I did not do my research and analysis of the script. But, this time I found myself looking for paradoxes, complications, ambiguity, antithesis, spaces for possibilities. I regarded these as positive, and not enigmas that I had to give distinct form to before working with actors and designers.

It's liberating, and I'd be lying if I didn't say it's also making me more "vulnerable" (an uncomfortable place to be for me sometimes) at the same time. It's making me work not only more closely with my colleagues, but to a large extent much more in "anguish" than before because I am really making a strong effort to look at things from as many angles as possible, while not claiming to own any knowledge that is better than those I am working with.

I had an acting teacher once tell me that the only "wrong" choice you ever make as an actor is the one you never try. The reality of working in professional situations doesn't allow that very often though since the emphasis is on a final product and so there's a lot of pressure to attach to a "right" choice quickly and then polish it as much as possible.

This is, I'd argue, a ground-up approach to directing and one that I think is possible of much richer, cohesive results. I look forward to talking about these things in this paper.

That's all for now, I should get to cracking on all of these papers that are smothering my mental space. :)