12/17/05: Back to basics...
I've been trying to go back and re-think what the "organizing question" is behind this sabbatical research project; I wonder if it still makes sense to me.
I started out thinking about constraints: What constrains me as a director from taking chances, pushing farther, exploring more deeply while preparing a Shakespeare production? What constraints might other directors feel with respect to specific choices (of approach, concept, style, casting, or the shaping of individual moments)? From there, I've developed a question that I want to ask other directors: What would you never do? What kind of choice would you never make? Why? Still seems like a good question to me. Not the only one, of course, but one that could lead to other questions (of course, I've discovered that I can't begin with that question. I have to lead up to it in some way, or at least I'm embarrassed to begin with it.
As I think about constraints, the most obvious constraints are economic. In a way, this seems to me to be a less fruitful angle to pursue for a couple of reasons: 1) this ground has been gone over a good deal; 2) there's a way in which the answers are at least superficially obvious; 3) the area of economics is so broad that I don't feel willing or qualified to include it in this particular study. At the same time, economic viability is bound to be such an overriding concern that maybe a director isn't able to even get near an area of real risk, and so my question may be largely irrelevant.
All of which makes me question my choices of theatres and directors to seek out, since all of them must survive in the commercial arena to an extent (given the lack of substantial subsidy in this country). Maybe academic theatre, the one area I have been ignoring, is the most likely one where directors face these problems. But of course academic theatre faces a different overriding constraint: the lack of experience and training of most of the actors a director works with. So do I then focus on professional theatres allied with universities? Or programs with very strong graduate acting programs? Hmm...
Gotta run.
I started out thinking about constraints: What constrains me as a director from taking chances, pushing farther, exploring more deeply while preparing a Shakespeare production? What constraints might other directors feel with respect to specific choices (of approach, concept, style, casting, or the shaping of individual moments)? From there, I've developed a question that I want to ask other directors: What would you never do? What kind of choice would you never make? Why? Still seems like a good question to me. Not the only one, of course, but one that could lead to other questions (of course, I've discovered that I can't begin with that question. I have to lead up to it in some way, or at least I'm embarrassed to begin with it.
As I think about constraints, the most obvious constraints are economic. In a way, this seems to me to be a less fruitful angle to pursue for a couple of reasons: 1) this ground has been gone over a good deal; 2) there's a way in which the answers are at least superficially obvious; 3) the area of economics is so broad that I don't feel willing or qualified to include it in this particular study. At the same time, economic viability is bound to be such an overriding concern that maybe a director isn't able to even get near an area of real risk, and so my question may be largely irrelevant.
All of which makes me question my choices of theatres and directors to seek out, since all of them must survive in the commercial arena to an extent (given the lack of substantial subsidy in this country). Maybe academic theatre, the one area I have been ignoring, is the most likely one where directors face these problems. But of course academic theatre faces a different overriding constraint: the lack of experience and training of most of the actors a director works with. So do I then focus on professional theatres allied with universities? Or programs with very strong graduate acting programs? Hmm...
Gotta run.
posted by Graham at 7:17 AM
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