Ah, yes, getting your show on its feet. It’s a real skill in and of itself. So let me establish my credentials before we dive in (or you can just jump ahead to the rules). I first directed professionally when I was 13. What?! Yes! My father, Victor Jory, a film and television actor, had grown up on the stage and it was his favorite medium. So for six or seven summers he would take out a production to what were then called “star stocks.”
Star stocks had all the large roles cast with actors who traveled with the show, and the smaller roles were picked up at each theatre, where the show would play for a week. Sometimes I was in the play and sometimes the tour was simply my home for the summer. Anyway, I was tagging along but not acting as my dad was touring a comedy called My Three Angels. A director would stay one week ahead of the tour, blocking the small-part actors in the next theatre we were scheduled to play. When I was 13, the “advance director” had a health crisis and had to leave the tour. Dad was at his wits’ end. Who would go ahead of the tour and block the smaller parts at the next theatre?
“Me,” I said.
I had watched the show most nights and I knew the blocking cold! And so it came to be that on Tuesday I would arrive at the next theatre Dad would play and by Saturday we would do a run-through. Sunday, Dad would arrive and do a tech/dress rehearsal and Monday they would open and I would move on to the next theatre.
I always enjoyed arriving because when I was introduced as the advance director the room would literally freeze. They were meeting a 13-year-old boy who was going to tell them what to do in great detail for the next several days. And it worked out. It was basic blocking, and I was completely unafraid to be an authority figure.
I would say, “Hey, Harry, don’t sit on that line. Sit on the next line.”
“Why?” Harry would challenge.
“Because, if you sit on that line, you will kill my father’s laugh and he won’t like it.” End of conversation.
So, about blocking...
As far as I’m concerned, to be a successful director, there are two blocking rules that cannot be broken.
Rule One: You should have the show completely blocked no later than halfway through the rehearsal period. If you have a hundred hours of rehearsal, it needs to be blocked after fifty hours. Of course, you can change this and that, but you and the actors need to be working on the roles and the story, not playing an artistic game of traffic cop.
Rule Two: You must be in charge of the blocking. Actors may have instincts about moving, but if there are more than two people onstage, actors will quickly lose track of how it looks. We are not simply dealing in a visual world, but in a psychological world, as well. If you have nine people onstage, not only does the blocking have to be visually interesting, but also, if done well, it makes what’s inside the character visible.
So, how do you make the blocking good?
Suggestion One: Work on angles and triangles. In most blocking, there is too much back and forth and not enough up and down.
Suggestion Two: If you are working on a proscenium stage, don’t be afraid to let actors who are not the moment’s focus have their backs to the audience. For a bit. It’s not illegal.
Suggestion Three: Actors who are playing to another actor should have their feet pointed directly at that actor. Amateurish blocking has everybody facing front, which was fine for the 18th century.
Suggestion Four: Do you have the lead actors “eating the stage”? An actor playing a leading role should have been everywhere on the set before the play is over. Did she sit on the stairs? Did she ever get down on the floor? Has she been in every chair the set provides? Use what you’ve got.
Suggestion Five: This might even be a rule. Make sure that sometimes more than one actor is moving at a time. Otherwise, you have: I move, then he moves, then she moves — which is the kindergarten of blocking.
Suggestion Six: Don’t always have the actor move off the end of the line. Sometimes move them in the middle of the line. Otherwise, it’s stilted.
Suggestion Seven: Watch dance. Watch ballet. They have much to teach us about movement.
Oh, I could go on. And on. And on. But I hope this gets you thinking.
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