Fear Of Peers

Good, but strenuous, rehearsal tonight. I don't think I was communicating my intentions or wants as a director particularly well, which meant that my cast (of one woman) spent a lot of time feeling her way in the dark, trying to work out what I was on about. Not literally feeling her way in the dark, of course. I'm not like Werner Herzog. Although, that might be a good warm up exercise for another time.

The other thing that was interesting for me was that while I was directing my leading lady (Sarah), we were visited by my last leading lady (Sarah). It shouldn't rattle me. But it did, slightly. Whilst we get on well, and while I think she enjoyed her time on Medea, I was very aware that she herself is a director, and one who speaks with straight-to-the-point clarity, whereas I can sometimes be guilty of chatting around a subject in order to get to the point, rather than taking a direct route. Both ways have their value, but it's easy to get very self conscious.

We all know of, and in some cases, have worked with poor directors ( I've noticed that I started that sentence with 'we', somehow assuming that anyone reading this blog is definitely involved in some way with theatre. While that's certainly very likely, it's by no means guaranteed.) These are the directors who passively offer no opinion (or, indeed, direction), or at the other end of the scale, stamp their opinion on absolutely every aspect of the production, meaning anything about the actual script is pulverised. I would give examples, but that would mean, you know, giving examples.

I like to think that I'm a pretty good director. I talk slightly too much in the early stages, but in context, I think it's a forgivable sin. Interestingly, even now I can feel myself channelling a director I used to know almost twenty years ago, when I worked at a theatre in South London: CYTO, or the Croydon Youth Theatre Organisation. I can't ever remember him sitting down to direct, he was almost always on his feet. Quite a few directors do direct from a seated position, and insomuch as I've thought about it at all, it's always disquieted me somewhat. Certainly, I've never felt comfortable staying seated while directing. Maybe it's nervous energy; and that's certainly how I remember this director from twenty years ago, right down to the habit of clicking the fingers on both hands while trying to get his head around a concept or narrative problem. In recent years, I've begun to wonder if I've imagined, or invented that tic. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, even if I seem to have adopted that tic for myself.

So, most of the time, I think I've got a pretty good handle on what it is to be a director. I've got a certain style and approach that I return to, but that gets altered and shifted depending on what the project is. A knockabout farce with just four people is going to have different demands than a drug survival play with twenty five young people all aged under 18. But that's the thing, I know all that. But, if someone I know and respect is in the room, I suddenly feel like a fool and an idiot. Well, more so than usual. I feel like an amateur, like a snake oil salesman who's one paragraph away from being unmasked as the liar everyone has suspected him of being.

It's ridiculous, of course: both the women in the room have elected to work with me on a number of occasions, and both have asked my advice on creative and artistic matters. I have to be logical about this: they wouldn't do that just to be nice (actually, if we're going to be logical, it's entirely within the realms of possibility that they'd collaborate with me 'just to be nice', but that gets a bit too Truman Show and oddly egotistical to make a great deal of sense, so I have to put my faith in my lack of faith.)

In last nights rehearsal, I began talking about the image of Russian Dolls (you see how I talk around something rather than getting straight to the point?), and it's just occurred to me now that that's how the rehearsal itself felt - while was looking in on Sarah (my actor), hoping to guide and support her, I felt Sarah (my previous actor) looking in on me, offering guidance and support. Didn't always stop me feeling like I was being exposed as an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about. I don't know why I was worried: I achieve that quite well enough by writing this blog.

More Books Than I'll Ever Read #2: Our Country's Good

I've suddenly realised now that I've decided to share with you, and upload a photo of, every book I own, along with an admission as to whether I've actually read it or not, I'm going to out myself as something of a fraud. Or, at the very least, an idiot. You see, I'm not sure that I've read enough 'important' books.

Whatever 'important' means. I'm not even sure I've read more than a couple of Dickens. Perhaps that's why I'm doing this; to embarrass myself into finally reading that copy of Wuthering Heights that's been sitting in my bathroom for the last few months. As opposed to the copy of Calvin And Hobbes that's on top of it.

Today's book, however, I have actually read. By coincidence, like the first book I uploaded, it's a play, but this time, it's a play I was in, as opposed to directing. This would be at least fifteen years ago now, and I was playing Wisehammer, a failed writer who was mournfully in love with a woman he had no chance of succeeding with. That's worth mentioning, since it's a role I seem to have found myself cast in with alarming regularity in recent years. It's probably best not to focus too much on the whys and wherefores.

This copy isn't the one I used in that original production, back with CYTO (that's the Croydon Youth Theatre Organisation to its friends, and I won't go into too much detail about it right now, since I'm fairly confident we'll get the chance to do that before too long).

I picked up this copy of OCG in a charity shop in Hove a couple of years ago, because I genuinely liked the play, and it has a number of good scenes in it. At the time, I hadn't acted for a while; I had completed a BA in Theatre, and that had almost entirely extinguished any desire to perform, and any belief that I was in any way talented.

However, I had heard that the NVT (the New Venture Theatre, and, again, we'll get into the details at a later date) were producing Our Country's Good, and I felt that I might have something of a head start on finding a character, having played it (albeit possibly weakly) years before.

In the event, however, I didn't really have the courage to audition, and so delayed my joining of the NVT by a couple of years (that theatre degree had really damaged my acting mojo) but what I did notice is how many really great parts there are, even the walk on, growl, and leave ones. Each character is written with such wit and economy that you'd be happy to play a part of just five lines. Each character seems real, and breathing. As a (always delaying) writer, it's a master class in how to create rich characters in just a few short strokes.

It's a good lesson to learn, no matter what type of story teller you are: writer, director, deviser (and I've had varying degrees of success as all three). In short, as many How To Write books - and a character in 'Spaced' - will tell you: "Skip to the end."

So I will.