Sunday, 30 July, 2023
2 minute read.
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Making theatre is collaborative.  Collaboration happens at a crosspoint; an intersection where people doing different jobs for the same endeavor meet, and communicate.

This is why, over the years, when I have been asked if I would teach a class about directing, or coach directors, my answer has always been No.

I have little that is useful to give to an aspiring director.  We would be exploring the puzzle from the same side of theatre’s collaborative crosspoint.  I believe they would be better served learning from experienced actors—actors come to the crosspoint from a different place.

None of the directing classes or training I’ve undergone taught me nearly as much as what listening to experienced actors taught me.

Experienced actors can teach directors a lot.  Actors want directors to be good at directing, and more to the point, good at directing them.  Actors want to do something incredible.  They want to perform, and hope what they’re doing might connect them to what inspired them to be an actor in the first place.

The crosspoint is a valuable wellspring of insight, and we can encounter helpful lessons there in ways we can’t elsewhere.

No approach to learning works for everyone.  People aren’t carbon copies of one another.  Our taste, our sensitivities, our preferences vary wildly. 

I coach actors because I am a director.  As a director, I interact with actors from the opposite side of that collaborative crosspoint.  In the audition, I am on the deciding side of the table.  An experienced actor can tell you what they’ve done, and try to teach what works for them.  There is generosity in that.  But they are not you, you are not them, and you are both on the same side of the crosspoint.

No part of productive, healthy collaboration happens automatically.  We have to learn what work to do, and learn how, in order to do that work, over, and over, and over again.

It’s exciting. And we’re in this together.

-J.P.

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Come along if you’d like…

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