Director’s Conference

Catalog description

Prerequisite: prior directing course work or experience This course will blend theories and ideas about directing with practical applications. Students will discuss the on- campus productions that go up each semester as a way of using the real-life situations that emerge in rehearsals, auditions, and meetings as context for the larger challenges that directors face with each production. This course will help shape a way of working and an approach to directing built upon the director’s own personal expression and the particular demands of their productions. Students will discuss their own productions in detail and determine a collective approach to the undertakings that directors have in common—text analysis, articulating style and form, using space, casting, working with designers and other collaborators, running efficient rehearsals and meetings, etc. This goal will be accomplished through a series of corresponding in-class projects that include staging scenes; analyzing texts, essays and articles; and watching film clips and documentaries on a collection of directors, artists, and theatre makers. This course will include weekly group conferences and—for students who will be directing readings, workshops, and productions in the theatre program and/or independent companies—individual rehearsal meetings. The course is also open to directors who do not have scheduled productions in the theatre program or for one of the independent companies. Among 171 Theatre other possibilities to meet the requirements of this course, those students might suggest hypothetical or imagined productions, expand upon projects developed in other classes, or create original projects on their own and, accordingly, make presentations in this class on agreed- upon aspects of those projects. Musical Theatre Lab for Actors and Directors