Things We Wish We'd Known Before We Started Directing
I took over a theatre program that hadn't had a director in a very long time. When I first stood on the stage, all alone, and looked out over the 420-seat auditorium, I was filled with big ideas. I had directed. I had performed. I had designed. I had even picked our first play before I met the students who would be in it. I was pretty much Peter Brook and Stanislavski rolled into one.
That is how prepared I thought I was.
In our training, we learned to hand sew a hem, coil a sound cable, and block a scene. I can still hear Frank (my curmudgeonly yet brilliant directing professor) growl, “Levels, people, levels!” But so much of building a program happens before anyone steps onstage, and I had considerably less training in that department.
I wish I had spent more time figuring out how to get the people around me as excited as I was. In my head, we were practically at opening night. In reality, we hadn't met.
So, I asked some friends who teach and direct what they wished they had known in their earlier years of directing. I wish someone had handed me their answers when I started. Though, come on. If you've met me, you know I would have said, “I'm not reading some old guy's blog. I just finished four years of college. I got this!”
Well. Here comes the old guy.
Thing to know #1: Meet the people who know how the place works
Get to know your office staff and custodians. They quietly run the school.
Let them get to know the real you, beyond the person who interviewed so confidently for the job. Ask their advice. Thank them. Listen when they tell you something you hadn't considered. They know…everything.
Nate Jorgensen, Iowa Thespians chapter director, gave almost the same advice:
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My first secretary was Sheila H. She had been there for about 100 years when I started, and she was the foundation of the school. She seemed to know the questions I had before I could ask them, and offered advice when I didn’t ask for it (but needed it). I would glance at her and she would point to a cabinet…yep, that was where the mimeo paper was kept. She had built and maintained the culture at the school.
My first week, she introduced me to a teacher at the mailbox, and said “you two need to talk.” And she was right. Diane became perhaps the greatest mentor I've ever had, and one of my very favorite friends.
These people know things. Who can help you. Where things live. Which fundraiser belongs to whom. (You do not want to cross an orchestra teacher who has been selling chocolate bars for thirty years. Yes, your suckers are different. Yes, they're delicious. But trust me, ain't gonna go over well.)
And visit the business office before you need something.
Early in my career, I needed supplies faster than I thought the purchasing process would allow. So I put them on my credit card. We won a state title that year, and the newspaper included a charming anecdote about the director who had “charged his way to victory.” I thought it was funny.
The business department found it less charming.
The director never got reimbursed.
We'll leave that person unnamed. It was me.
Jackie Charneski, now at St. Johns High School, learned this early, too. At her first teaching job, she funded two Christmas plays herself. She called it “almost a financial disaster for me.”
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Learn the process before deciding it doesn't work. An earlier introduction to accounts payable would have been cheaper.
And ask your custodians for a tour. Know your building beyond the stage and the nearest bathroom. Ask your custodians how the place works after hours, including alarms and security procedures. You do not want to learn this while waiting at eleven at night for the fire department and a principal in his pajamas. Neither will find your explanation amusing.
Then ask the office staff for the calendar. Exams. Parent-teacher conferences, which you are not getting out of for rehearsal. And prom. Oh lordy, I have scheduled against prom. You will lose that battle.
Thing to know #2: You can ask another director for the whole box
My friend and longtime theatre comrade Lori Duncan, now retired from White Pines Middle School, arrived at her first middle school drama job with ambition and a lovingly created nine-week unit from student teaching, printed and spiral bound at the local Staples. She was set to inherit a well stocked classroom and prepared curriculum. What she actually inherited was a Blockbuster Video card and a set of high school textbooks.
That was it.
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Lori searched and found a middle school teacher not far away who had built a sizable program. That was Mary P., then teaching at Bloomfield Hills Middle School. Lori called, introduced herself, and explained her situation.
Mary invited her to spend the day.
Lori watched her teach. Games, activities, scripts, classroom routines. An entire world of possibilities she hadn't known existed. And before she left, Mary handed her a box of materials.
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Get to know the directors in your area. Trust me, we all love to share our stories and our experiences. The directors from my area became some of my closest friends. We shared resources, advice, and stories. Oh, the stories. A student misses one rehearsal and, by the time we finish telling it over dinner, it's Hamlet, Act Six.
Call someone. Ask to watch them work. Ask what they use. Someday, someone will call you with a nine-week unit and thirty sixth graders arriving Monday.
Remember the box.
Thing to know #3: Give people a way into your program
Once you start meeting people, you have to leave room for them to surprise you. At first, I went into the year with a show and a vision for the cast I wanted. I spent more time looking for what fit that image, rather than seeing what the auditioners were sharing.
Jenna Davies, executive producer and owner of the Palace Theatre in Idaho, asks directors to think about what that can leave out.
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Jenna offered the example of someone who gives a terrible audition. Your artistic judgment might tell you to pass. Your responsibility to the community might tell you to find a way for that person to participate.
“Sometimes they just need that place to belong,” she said.
You still have a show to cast. But you also have a person standing there, and you get to consider what they might become with some guidance and a chance.
When I interviewed Mary Bogrette, the same Mary P. who handed Lori that box, I asked how she wanted her program to be remembered. One of her answers belongs here:
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That sense of belonging reaches beyond the cast, too. Nate started inviting administrators, school board members, and activities directors to his productions early in his career. Then he did something I love:
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Nate gave those people a place in the program, too. They could see exactly whom they were helping.
Thing to know #4: They need your guidance, even when they don't like your decision
I was only two years older than my first students. At the end of my first year directing, one of them told me I needed to remember that I was not their friend and didn't need to be liked to be respected. The kids did like me, he said. But he thought I should spend more time guiding them through the production and less time trying to be their friend.
I wanted to belong, too. As a director, though, your sense of belonging needs to be different. Those students needed to trust me to guide them, including when I made a decision they didn't like. I could care deeply about them and still let them be disappointed with me.
My friend John Rutherford of Groves High School learned to give himself time to consider his casting decisions:
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Thing to know #5: You don't have to do it all, or do it all night
You're going to feel that you have to support everyone. Your cast, your crew, your front of house staff, your producers, your parents and boards. Everyone needs someone, and somehow you've decided that someone is always you.
Find one or two people early who believe in you and will help. They don't need to arrive knowing how to run a theatre. Give them something they can own, and let them own it. Some of the work eating your time might be work they actually enjoy.
I learned this late. I was proud of what we did, but I could always step back and say, “We could have done it better.” Eventually, with people I trusted taking on work that used to eat my time and take my joy, I found myself saying, “We had a great time doing it.” I wish I had figured that out sooner.
John also learned that the schedule itself could change:
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John generally rehearses three or four days a week, skips Fridays, and tries to finish by five. Dinner. Time to unwind. A weekend he can recognize as a weekend.
Thing to know #6: You don't owe the previous director's decisions a lifetime commitment
Once you understand how things work, question them. A board or manager may require a particular tool or schedule. You can still make the case for changing it. “We've always done it this way” kills inspiration and innovation before either gets a chance.
Andy, one of my current teammates, always says, “The pain of staying the same needs to be more than the pain of change.”
I spent a couple of years frustrated with a ticketing platform that supposedly helped me manage things. Setting it up was more work than selling paper tickets had been. I wanted to control my seating chart and what appeared on my tickets. Instead, I kept needing someone else to help me do my job.
Then came the afternoon I nearly threw my phone against the wall.
After finally reaching a human being, I was told they would take a message and someone would get back to me. I asked whether anyone else in the office could help. No.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon.
That's like walking into a store, asking for help, and being told, “Oh no, we have no people here.” By a person.
If this was three o'clock, what happened at 6:55 when people were lining up for tickets?
That frustration was one of the reasons I co-founded Ludus. I wanted control over my own work and a human I could reach when I needed help.
You don't have to start a software company to change your software. Apparently I needed to be dramatic about it.
The same questioning applies to prices and performances. Stop deciding in advance what your community will or won't accept. Try something. We raised ticket prices by five dollars. We added performances. And the number of people coming grew.
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Some people grumbled about the price. For about a day.
I'm glad I didn't let that imagined conversation decide what our students would get to experience.
Thing to know #7: Find your human glasses
My friend and teammate, Kaylyn, recently got new glasses. At first, they made her dizzy. Things looked blurry. She questioned the change. After wearing them for a while, who knew, she could see better. And side benefit, she looked even more badass than before. So, taking that metaphor too far, we all may need some human glasses.
Human glasses are the people who help you see something you can't see clearly yourself. My current teammates Kaylyn and Andy do that for me. They support me completely, including when that means telling me to look in a different direction.
My friend Ashley Bowen of Portage Central High School will look me in the face and tell me to get over it, or that, much as she hates to tell me, I'm wrong. I laugh, I argue, and eventually agree.
You need someone whose belief in you survives your being wrong. And you need to keep listening to them when you would much prefer a compliment.
When I retired, my entire team was made up of former students. People who had gone through the program, understood what it meant to kids, and came back to help create that experience for someone else. They were my dream team. I learned to rely on them. And eventually, I learned that I could leave.
That last part was a big deal.
The program is now led by a former student who understood what was great about her experience there. She also understood that she needed to make it her own, for the students standing in front of her. Knowing that made it easier to turn things over. I trusted her to make changes, just as I had needed people to trust me.
I certainly wasn’t thinking about any of this when I stood on that stage looking out at those 420 seats. I had a show picked out. I had ideas for the set. Oh, did I have ideas for the set.
I couldn’t have imagined how much the people I was about to meet would teach me. Or that some of the students I was preparing to direct would eventually become the people I depended on.
I wish I could go back and tell that young director a few things.
I’d tell him to keep the big ideas. Then I’d walk him down to the office to meet Sheila.
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