Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The Heiress Collaborative

Do you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice? I know that students get tired of mine. It's often when I close my mouth and allow the students their say that some very exciting learning begins to happen. Swallowing my pride, I decided to apply the same principle to directing and turned over the responsibility to the cast of The Heiress.

I did hedge my bets a bit, casting myself in the production so that I still get an occasional say. The process is new to me and imperfect, but we are finding our groove. The cast began with an entire week of discussion around the table, analyzing the text and characters to the point where we were nearly all on the same page. Together we also trimmed the script to keep its length under two hours. We are working on a three-quarters thrust stage, so each cast member is an "extra eye" on the seven scenes of the play, working with me to make sure that the staging reads to all members of the audience. Administratively, the cast worked with an artist on the poster design and put together a youtube video promoting the play. We are also collectively responsible for running lights and sound, assisting with costume changes and load-in of all physical aspects of a show, like a self-contained unit.

The Heiress is a perfect play for this experiment. It has a cast of nine, which usually gives us just enough people working behind the scenes while others are onstage. Were it a musical or more complexly structured piece, the collaboration may not work, but The Heiress is relatively simple and straight-forward. It has only a single set and two acts and falls into that category of play where it seems that people just stand around talking. It's definitely a challenge making that type of play seem active and the students are learning a lot about storytelling.

Leaders are definitely emerging on all fronts. Several people have stepped forward as strong directors, while others enjoy the more administrative and technical aspects. All are pulling double duty as actors, which for me has been personally stressful. As a director, your brain is wired to analyze and control the action, but as an actor you must let go and just allow yourself to be in the moment. It's not a comfortable combination, a tightrope of sorts, but a situation that I am definitely learning from. Sometimes the collective voice feels like too many cooks in the kitchen, while at other times it yields some very fresh results. Again, it is a tightrope walk for us all and one of the first situations where I find myself giving notes to (and getting notes from) others actors.

The Heiress opens Wednesday, February 23 - Sunday, February 22. For more information, go to www.sage.edu/capa.

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