Process Reflections

I’m never more energized and prepared than after I’ve taken a course in a subject and then I almost immediately have the opportunity to practice the units covered in the course. Of the courses that my Summer MA cohort took during our pivotal second year, I got the most out of directing. My undergraduate degree is in directing, and based on that training, I’ve had the great privilege of directing many youth and educational productions over the years; these projects coincided with an increase in my professional bookings as a sound designer as well as a designer in the burgeoning field of video projections. Frustratingly, I’ve struggled with booking any professional directing projects. Maybe that will change in my 40s, who knows?

That hasn’t diminished my love for directing live theatre. I chose that degree in undergrad because it felt like a bridge between the actors and creative team; I have to be able to communicate with both, and I think that has made me a more well-rounded theatre artist: I speak both “languages.” When accepted into the Summer MA program for theatre educators, I was excited to expand my horizons in acting styles and design techniques for set, lighting, and costumes, but I was most anxious to study for just a few weeks under the tutelage of Rena Cook, who I felt I already met when using her Voice for the Young Actor workbook with my acting students during the 2022-23 school year as part of my acting portfolio. If she structured her workbook so effectively, so methodically, I had no doubts that directing would be another demonstration of her tried and true prowess. Maybe some of that legendary pedagogy could rub off on me. My primary concern would be the concentrated nature of the summer program, an entire semester condensed into 3 or 4 weeks, plus an additional week of residencies. Would I be able to retain all our content and maintain the momentum to fulfill my directing duties for the forthcoming fall play, which would constitute both portfolios for costume design and directing? The answer is a noncommittal yes and no.

Thankfully, I already knew which play I would be directing as we announced our season in April 2023, with the theme of “Casting Spells and Making Magic.” My department—which I’m fortunate to have, as so many theatre teachers nationwide are one-person programs—chose our mainstage musical to be Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella as well as fairytale–inspired one-acts in a couple of our acting classes, but the season would open in November with She Kills Monsters by Qui Nguyen under my direction.

While the excitement for Cinderella was overwhelming with our majority female-identifying students, there was still solid interest in She Kills Monsters, notably when describing the concept of a D&D campaign come to life. Though written by a male playwright, this play also had strong female, nonbinary, and queer voices and definitely appealed to the geeks in our department, especially ones who wanted to dive into an adventure and learn some stage combat and many other memorable experiences. Since I already knew I would be directing this play, half of my focus was devoted to scribbling preliminary notes while the other half focused on the tasks at hand. The more pre-production work I can do, the more successful my students can be. My concept is generally sketched out, and my plan is to use the first week of the school year doing the more in-depth analysis alongside the students in my Mainstage Production class that will comprise the company of She Kills Monsters. 

I’m coming up for some air. I’m writing this at the end of the fifth week of the nine-week rehearsal process. With added structures in place such as making this a graded course called Mainstage Production that included the addition of a performance agreement, I’ve seen increased participation and buy-in from students; these structures seemed to expose deeper foundational issues that extend beyond just the theatre department but the school as a whole. I’ll only spend two pages on this reflection, so to summarize those foundational difficulties, there is always room for improvement, doubly true for public charter schools.

The most notable update has to do with the script itself. I have worked on a few productions of She Kills Monsters over the years, as fight choreographer for the Young Adventurers Edition a couple times, and directing a streaming version at my school in Fall 2020, when Qui Nguyen was among the first to adapt his wildly popular play for the online platforms we were all using during the pandemic, with the subtitle Virtual Realms.  However, I had yet to work on Nguyen’s original version; I knew there was some profanity, but our school’s plays have included strong language before under the right circumstances. However, in my judgment, I didn’t feel that the students and audiences would benefit from the “shock” of multiple f-bombs and other expletives. However, the primary issue I had with our school performing the original version was it strained the suspension of disbelief to its breaking point. In the first iteration of his story, Nguyen wrote Agnes, Miles, and Vera as adults at the Athens High School where the other characters are students. Unless I cast actual adults in these roles—which I wouldn’t do in a school production—I do not think we would’ve been successful with teenagers playing both teenagers and adults. Additionally, as we learned from an in-class readthrough, me and the students kept getting hung up on some plot details that detracted from the overall theme, such as Miles thinking Agnes was having an affair with the student Chuck (when they were actually playing the D&D campaign) and verbally assaulting the real-life Gabbi & Tina for their past bullying of Tilly.

My first instinct was to push through since our license had been granted, but that would’ve been a cop-out. This doesn’t work for a school production and creates a number of issues that would distract our audience as much as us. So we discovered (the hard way) why Qui Nguyen adapted the Young Adventurers Edition made popular in schools all over North America. My training in the Summer MA program left me more open to suggestions and points of view I hadn’t considered. So rather than stubbornly tell folks to “deal with it,” we altered course away from the original version, and students were much more comfortable with the change. I think this helped with increased student commitment because I was open to their own creative impulses and investment. The casting process was much smoother than in years past, though turnout wasn’t as high as I hoped. One philosophy about directing with which I heartily agree is that casting is where a great deal of the work of directing is accomplished, creating the company that could work together well and casting student actors to their strengths, finding a balance between a role where they can feel accomplished, but which will challenge them and push their boundaries. Our senior class this year is quite lacking, so the field was wide open and I cast two new students as Agnes and Tilly, filling out the rest of the cast with experienced student character actors who don’t crave the spotlight and support their ensemble well. I also cast two student understudies, one to cover male roles and one to cover female roles, and I’ve had to lean on both for many of those supporting characters. Their grades will be reflected accordingly. On day one, as we learned from Rena and our directing texts, I went to considerable lengths to set the tone as one of mutual respect. I carefully crafted the rehearsal schedule using a block/work/run structure: each scene would be blocked first, then worked for character, relationships, objective/tactics, and then when that scene was run, that scene would need to be off-book. I tried it as an alternative to a firm off-book date for the entire show, but a gradual process that would help get scripts out of students’ hands. This rehearsal schedule also meant there were fewer surprises from me. My thinking is that I would respect their time by ending on time, if they would respect my time by arriving on time.

In the words of Frodo Baggins after the One Ring plunges into the fires of Mount Doom, “It’s gone. It’s done.” I’m ultimately proud of the work I did as a director and proud of the show the students put into it. My hope is always that when the final performance concludes, everyone is still on mostly good terms. I make an effort to remind myself that not everyone has the same level of commitment, and that is ok. The most important results can be measured in what students learned: did they meet/exceed the expectations of the class, and if they had any personal goals or objectives, did they achieve those? I also hope that each individual in the ensemble, onstage and off, had more than a few moments to recall fondly when thinking back on this ephemeral experience.

One of the traditions I proudly carry on from a predecessor is a sort of mantra or prayer before each dress rehearsal and performance: a moment where everyone can center our focus on the task at hand, lifting each other up and joining together in the collective achievement of live theatre. With hands joined, we bow our heads as I recite, “Remember your talents are a gift from above, and how you use those talents is how you honor them. Magic is the theatre, the theatre is magic, and blessed are they that make that magic.” Only after that, we stay in the circle and send everyone to places with a rousing round of “Fired Up!”

Traditions aside, it is incumbent upon me to reflect on how the mainstage production experience can improve. Generally, I feel that students’ enthusiasm to be involved in whatever capacity almost evaporated entirely when it came time to actually do the work. Even my small Tech Practicum class—whose grade is dependent on working one of these positions—was reluctant to participate as stage managers, ASMs, board ops, anything. So as tech week approached, I scrambled to fill those positions and even ended up writing light, sound, and video cues, and running the booth myself with students backstage (with a teacher chaperone) and a student follow spot operator. Of the 50+ students that are supposedly in our theatre pathway, maybe a third of them are regularly active and participating in making theatre. And even then, the upperclassmen have one foot out the door. They get jobs (plural!) outside of school, overcommit themselves, and even when a grade is attached, we still have a core of dedicated students. My worry at this moment is those students will get burned out. I don’t want to smother their fire, their passion for this artform or take advantage of them in any way.

Concerning the production itself, this was largely the production I envisioned. The student actors still had issues with memorization, but so frequently I saw them helping each other out, and they were receptive to my direction and notes I gave along the way. They weren’t afraid to be vulnerable, and I wasn’t afraid to compromise on small choices. It all came back to mutual respect that didn’t go away just because we were in the trenches of performance.

The most obvious change from my original set design did away with the arch/portal that joined the two platforms at center stage; it just wasn’t coming together structurally, but I wanted to utilize any available vertical space that would be a neutral backdrop for the action on stage. I used the top half of the cyc as a projection surface and added two plywood panels on the upstage side that were abstractly painted with the shapes I used for the oversized dice that became the Tiamat heads. We didn’t allot as much time as I would’ve liked to fight choreography, but students were gaining experience and for all of them, it was their first time with stage combat. The audience experience felt largely positive and received great feedback from our administration. My second attempt on She Kills Monsters was an improvement on my first (and in person!), but the techniques and structures I learned during my second year with the Summer MA saw me through and made me successfully direct this ensemble through a memorable production.