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New Beginnings
If you have an academic day job, as I have, you know that it is the beginning of the new school year. It’s the time for meetings and planning and looking ahead. People have ideas about how to do it...
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When You Steal…
Artists steal. It’s well documented. It’s a topic that has come up a couple of times before (here and here). But it occurs to me that some may not know exactly how to steal—artistically speaking, so...
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Art is Not Just a Matter of Preference
When I was an undergraduate, I had an English professor who said that the accomplished student of literature should be able to read a poem and separate the quality of the work and whether or not it was...
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Stuck? Adopt a New Model
Among the many recent articles about John Boehner was one saying that Speaker Boehner’s problem was that he was using an old model that really didn’t work anymore. This, of course, caused me to think...
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Trash It!
There are times in the life of a project when things are not going the way we would like. Every working artist experiences these times. The question is what to do about them. Do we forge ahead? Do we...
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“It Always Comes Together”
That’s what a musician who has played every musical that I have directed for the past several years said that to me recently after a particularly brutal first-night-with-the-band rehearsal. It was in...
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How Far Should the Interpretive Artist Go?
In a discussion with a fellow director not long ago, the question of how far we can stretch in terms of interpretation of a playwright’s work came up. Of course, as we both freely admit, interpretive...
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Get Out of Your Head
Actors and directors are taught to analyze characters and plays, then to analyze how the character fits into the play. Photographers are taught to analyze the shooting situation in order to come up...
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You’re Always Auditioning
Auditions suck. Just ask any actor. For that matter, ask any director. The problem from an acting point of view is to demonstrate that you are the best choice to perform a given role with—if it’s a...
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No Small Parts
Constantine Stanislavski famously said, “There are no small parts, only small actors.” And while most directors and acting coaches firmly believe that, most actors, of course, do not. That’s primarily...
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