A friend (not in the theater) asked me how I bring a play to life. Here is my response:

I have to start out by saying that plays are very different than books or movies. A play only exists at the moment it is being performed. Unlike a book which you can put down and return to later or a movie where you can put it on pause to do something else, a play starts and runs to its conclusion. Even more interesting, to me at least, is that you are watching real, live people saying real, live words. That intimacy is what compels the audience to sit there for an hour and a half or longer to watch the characters say words that someone else wrote for them.

I think of books as being about ideas, large and small. Movies are about pictures. Plays are about words. Other than moving around on a fixed set, all the actors can do is relate to each other. They can dance, they can fight, they can laugh, they can cry but whatever they do, it must be something that the audience can see or hear.

After writing for a couple of hours, I realized I was answering the wrong question.

So here we go again.

To bring a play to life, I will spend two months reading it. I will read it from the perspective of each character. I will read one scene at at a time, I will read it cover to cover without stopping, I’ll look for sub-text, I’ll look for what every character wants in life, in the play, in the scene, in the beat.

I will make notes on what each character says about themselves and what other characters say about them. I read reviews of previous productions. I’ll start to see the set. It may not be what the playwright describes because of our stage constraints. I’ll set the rehearsal schedule: 35 to 45 three hour rehearsals depending on the length of the play and it’s complexity – and hour and fifteen minutes to an hour and a half of rehearsal for every minute of the play.

I’ll start to get an idea of the characteristics I want in my actors. Casting is the single biggest issue in the ultimate success of the play. I obsess over it. I’ll start calling actors I want to look at in auditions. Ultimately, I’ll have a cast.

The first rehearsal is easy and relatively short. All the actors need to get to know each other, particularly those with close relationships on stage (husband and wife sort of thing). We will read the play. Interesting fact: That first read through will give me the best estimate of the final running time of the play until about a week before opening.

The second rehearsal is when the real work starts. The script says: As the lights come up, “A” is sitting on the sofa and “B” enters from the bedroom. I start to ask the actors questions. I hardly EVER tell and actor what to think. I NEVER tell them how to say a line.

Why are you sitting on the sofa? What are you doing? What were you doing five minutes ago? One minute ago? Do you know “B” is coming in? What do you think about “B”? What do you want? How do you feel about “B”‘s arrival? For the next two months I am going to ask thousands of questions of each actor. If the answer is not what I want to hear, I ask them another question and another until they start to get a picture of their relationship with their character and all the other characters.

Here is an example:

Me: How do you feel about “B”.

“A”: I don’t like him.

Me: Why not?

“A”: He’s not nice to “C”.

Me: Why isn’t he nice to “C”?

“A”: “C” stole his girlfriend.

Me: Well, that wasn’t a nice thing for “C” to do. Put yourself in “B”‘s place. How would that feel?

“A”: Pretty bad, I guess.

Me: Wouldn’t it help if you were nice to “B” to help him get over his girlfriend?

“A”: I guess so.

And so on for hour after hour.

While this is going on, we are working on the rough blocking (how they move on stage). The actors are also memorizing their lines. This lasts about a month (half the rehearsals).

As they start to understand their characters and the interrelationships, I add “personalizations”: Find someone in your real life who you feel about the way your character feels about “B”. Never reveal who you have personalized. Don’t be afraid to change it if how you feel about “B” changes. Don’t pick someone close to you: Spouse, sibling, child: Those relationships are too complicated. Pick someone from TV or a movie, someone you would like to know, someone you know casually. Those simple relationships project well off the stage.

The next break comes when we take the scripts out of their hands. It’s a crisis. They have lost their security blanket. The next few rehearsals are going to be terrible. Actors can call “Line” and the stage manager will give them a hint. This process will go on until about two weeks to ten days before opening when we don’t let them call for lines any more. Another crisis time. They have to say something. The audience hasn’t read the script so as long as they are the character they can say pretty much whatever they want. There is usually another actor on stage who can help bail them out. It’s an art to be able to work through those moments.

Once they are comfortably “off book” (no scripts), the real work on the play can start. More questions, finer blocking (It’s hard for an actor to carry two glasses of champagne when he has a script in one hand.) By now the actors are sounding real as they speak their lines. They sound like two people really having a conversation, just using words that someone else wrote for them. For me, as director, I start to hear lines that don’t ring true. I’ll ask: “Why did you say that?” Nine times out of ten, the actor will respond “I don’t know”. More questions.

Now we start to address the hard parts that we left for now: Fight choreography, crying, undressing, kissing (far harder than you might think), and things like that.

By now we should have a set (depending on the theater) so the actors can go up or down stairs, the doors are where they’re supposed to be. We find out that actor “A” doesn’t have time to exit through door #1 and run around back stage to enter door #2 on time. The sofa the prop people got doesn’t fit in the space allowed for it. Changes have to be made, the actors have to adjust. On top of all of this, the character development is just about complete.

Realize that in all this time I have never told an actor how to say a line: Be happy here, you are sad here. Those are results. The actor will act the results and it will look and be false. If I want the actor to be sad, I have to find a way that they can really be sad.

Crying is particularly hard to address, particularly for men. I tell my actors: It isn’t whether you cry or not, we need to see you struggle to not let us see you cry. Then you can win or lose the battle and either will be right for the audience. I suggest to the actor that they find something in their life that makes them want to cry, the death of a favorite pet, the loss of a loved one. One actress who could cry easily, always cries when she thinks about how we are destroying the earth. Whatever works. I also tell my actors not to worry if a trigger no longer works, sometimes you have just expunged the devils in that moment.

Now the theater lighting is added, another throw for the actors. The costumes arrive. OMG!! They make me look fat/skinny/jaundiced. They’re too tight, they’re too loose, I don’t like the color. “A”‘s dress is prettier. Why can’t I wear . . . My shoes don’t fit.

In spite of all of this somehow we get to opening night and everything works just like I envisioned it months ago.

That’s how a play comes to life.

Doug B