Thinking All the Time

I have been thinking about what an actor said to me at rehearsal last night. She said I needed to be stronger on the actors to make them work at understanding what they are saying more. This made me think about how I direct. I think that in Winter's Tale, I have been too much of a friend. It is too late to change this now but I need to be much firmer in future. I think I often feel that keeping the actors on-task and reminding them of what they have to do can come off as nagging; this is what I wish to avoid. Yet, if I avoid the nagging, the actors will find any excuse to avoid facing the challenge.

I have also realised the difference between telling the actors what to do and telling them how to do something. If you tell the actors what to do then you leave room for them to come up with how to do it. Yet, if you tell them the how, you leave no room for them to have any meaningful input. Of course, there is also freedom for the actors to com up with what to do and a director should be prepared to let them play to see if their ideas work. The bad situation is when the actors don't come up with anything so the director often feels they need to micromanage instead of giving the actors the broad brush-strokes - at least that is how I often feel.