OCT
7

Six Horrible, Awful, Terrible Mistakes I’ve Made as a Director

By Jon Jory 

Jon Jory is the author of five plays with Pioneer Drama Service. 

As the Producing Director at Actors Theatre of Louisville, I directed over 125 plays and produced over 1,000 during my 32-year tenure.  I conceived the internationally lauded Humana Festival of New American Plays, the SHORTS Festival, and the Brown-Forman Classics-in-Context Festival.  I was also the Artistic Founding Director of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and I have been inducted in New York’s Theatre Hall of Fame.  I’ve directed on Broadway, off Broadway, and in eight different foreign nations.  I’ve even received a Special Tony Award for my work in regional theatre.

Despite all that, I’ve made some awful, terrible mistakes as a director.  Here are six of them:

1.  Blocking too late in the process

Now, just so I don’t make the mistake of not defining the term, blocking is when and where actors move and what they do when they get there.  My horrible mistake here was when the blocking process was finished too late in the rehearsal process and didn’t leave sufficient time to work on the acting of the text.  Eventually I made a hard and fast rule for myself that the blocking of the play or musical (dances and songs included) must absolutely–no kidding around–be finished at the latest halfway to the technical rehearsals.  Thus, when we worked on a three-week-to-tech schedule, I would always, without exception, finish blocking in ten days, leaving eleven days to concentrate on the acting.  Of course, your schedule will be different than mine since I was working five hours daily on rehearsal, but the point remains:  finish blocking no later than halfway through your rehearsal schedule up to tech rehearsals.  Eventually, I came to believe this was so important that when guest directors were hired, I sought agreement to this rule.

2.  Talking too much to actors

I tend to talk too much and not specifically enough.  Talking to an actor about their role in a scene without any specifics from one of their lines is like trying to fly a kite in a rainstorm.  Only specifics truly create improvement.  So I’ve learned to pick a line or speech in Scene One, and I describe the situation in which the line is said, the intent of the line, and the current situation of the character saying it.  Then, I start the scene three lines before that speech and continue until three lines after.  I run that sequence three times and then move on.  The magic is that a breakthrough on a single speech often improves the whole scene.  As a general note, I ask the stage manager to keep a stop watch and say “time” if I have talked for more than three minutes.  If you can’t say it in three minutes, it probably can’t be said.

3.  Thinking I’m not allowed to say the line for the actor

Too many times I’ve wanted to just say the line for the actor, only to have a voice inside my head tell me to stop.  I’ve learned not to listen to that voice anymore.  If discussing the moment and the situation does not produce a positive result, say two sentences of the line for the actor.  The idea that actors resent this is considerably overblown.  If in my 50-year career actors have not asked me a thousand times, “Just say it for me,” I would eat my hat...  if I owned one.

4.  Not giving any notes to someone after a run-through

You’d think an actor would like not getting any notes after a run-through, but trust me, it’s a disconcerting feeling to listen to everyone else get notes...  except you.  Unless you are doing a large-cast musical, every actor must get at least one note lest they think their creativity is unimportant.  Check your notes against the call list before you give them.

5.  Saying “faster and louder” too often

The problem with calling out “Faster and louder” as a directorial tool is that it’s too general when the goal of every actor in every play is specificity.  You can definitely say “faster” for a three- or four-line sequence, but not for anything longer.  Lee Strasberg, the great acting teacher, once told me, “The mind only absorbs at the point of change.”  This being so, variety is the necessity, not a steady “faster and louder.”

6.  Not breaking down the call sheet

You can’t over-generalize, like writing, “1:00-3:00 pm – Acting.”  The call sheet needs to be broken down into specifics.  Granted, you can say, “1:00-4:00 pm – Run play,” but other than that, your schedule should be as specific as possible:  “2:00-3:00 pm – Pages 27-30, 3:00-5:00 pm – Pages 40-47.”  Of course, the call sheet should also list the actors called for each time period.  And as a side note here, I think run-throughs are often overused as a substitute for specific work.  My goal is always three full run-throughs before tech.  More than that is usually a giveaway that the director doesn’t know what to do with the time.

Did you notice the common thread running through many of these?  I truly believe that the journey of my 50-year professional directing career has basically been a journey from generalities to specifics.