You’re told, “You’re directing this show!” and you say, “Great!” First comes blinding excitement. Then comes remorseful dread! That’s immediately followed by encompassing doubt!! Which leads us to TOTAL PANIC!
What am I gonna do?!
How am I supposed to direct this?!
Where will I find the talent?!
What if people hate it?!
What if it’s a flop?!!
WHAT IF WHAT IF WHAT IF!!!!!!!
Then in the middle of the night you’re awoken by a dream - or maybe you’re in line at Starbucks getting your Green Tea Latte - or just maybe you’re in the shower thinking about how to tell the producer, you’re not the right person to direct this show – when it happens! It’s a flicker of an idea - more like a spark – and suddenly you have ‘creation’ and your intuition meets with your ambition to devise innovation along side your imagination and you begin the process known as conceptualization
You magically see it. You feel it. If the ‘spark of creation’ is that good, you might even taste it! Conceptualization is the process of devising your show - The process that makes the play or musical ‘yours’. You may have seen Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing before, but it’s completely different with each directors unique eye for story telling and it is their hunger, passion, desire, and spirit that leads them to direct the show with their own special vision.
Artistic Vision is the key to great stage storytelling. You can always tell when the production lacked vision. The stage fails to sizzle. The actors fail to crackle with excitement. The audience doesn’t simmer as the story unfolds. “It all is lackluster. It lacks – well luster.”
When the vision is strong…it’s like an itch. Persistent and occasionally annoying. You suddenly can’t do anything but focus all your energy and attention on flushing out the concept to make sure it really works with the story. This is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. Why? Well, you need the opportunity to decide whether the concept is any good or if it’s the director’s pure vanity that makes it ‘exciting’. This stage is critical or you end up with dud shows like “HAMLET” (in Hawaii).
More often then not your intuition will not lead you astray and the concept – once tweaked - is actually a great addition to the story the play is telling and is providing to the audience something new that they had never experienced before. Additionally it is showcasing the director’s special brand of Artistic Vision.
When does this happen? Months – sometimes years – before the director ever gets to the audition. Before the director even gets his designers… this spark of creation is the first seed required to raise the crop known as a show. And the field it grows on is the one of the imagination.
The imagination…the initial spark of creation couldn’t exist with out it and it is the director’s playground. That’s where I started with Kiss of the Spiderwoman - In the imagination. A single idea. A kernel. A grain that will lead us – in the next 12 weeks – to a dark, decadent, and dramatic musical that will be unlike anything you have ever seen onstage at the Rose Marine Theater.
Are you ready for it?
Adam,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog. I can totally identify, as your creative process seems very much like mine in coming up with concepts for musical programs. Like you say, it must begin with a "kernel/grain" long before anything becomes reality. And yet, that kernel/grain IS the reality. Best wishes for KOTSW.