My Director's Lens and SNM

Production Still from SNM

My Director’s Lens and SNM

I have been directing theatre for more than two decades -- since I was 22, younger if you consider directing scenes I did for classes.  I came to it as an actor myself and am a reasonably good acting coach because of that.  I have skills, I have a decent eye, I have excellent intuition, I can make pretty stage pictures, and I have heard from many that I am a “good director” (whatever that really means) and a pleasure to work with. 

Sometimes it goes to your head a little – your healthy levels of confidence morph into a kind of egotism you may not even be aware of.  You watch the offerings of other directors, and shake your head metaphorically at what you perceive as clumsiness.  And even if it is a worthy effort, you think, “This is pretty good, but if I had an hour’s rehearsal with these people, I could make it great!”  And then BAM!  You are confronted by a creation of actual genius, and you have what I call the “Salieri Moment” (referring to Peter Shaffer’s AMADEUS).  You realize you were actually a mediocrity all along. 

I had that humbling experience when I attended SLEEP NO MORE in July of 2013.  I was dumbfounded by the way the creators had put seemingly disparate elements together to make a cohesive whole.  The imagining and design of the space was beyond my comprehension – so much creativity. The choreography and acting sent my head, my emotions, all my senses, my guts, and my very soul into a cathartic ecstasy unlike anything I’d ever experienced in a performance space.

I cannot emphasize enough how very rare that is.  I love theatre, I have seen and made theatre that penetrates deeply for me, my acting partners, and the audience; and for my cast and their spectators when I’m directing.  I know art’s power, and I don’t mean to imply that I don’t feel it often.  I do.  No other reason to sacrifice the time, your social life, personal relationships, sleep, sweat, and tears if it doesn’t move you.  It DOES move me, like nothing else.  But I have never before been provoked and engaged to this degree, and never for this long after having experienced a show.   

On my third and final seeing of the show, the director in me began thinking of things that aren’t usually a concern when you’re dealing with straight proscenium or even black box theatres.  SLEEP NO MORE is a kind of ‘promenade theatre’ in which the audience moves to follow the action.  But it’s even more complex than that in SLEEP NO MORE.  Because action is happening simultaneously in different rooms, on multiple floors, and it intertwines, it isn’t just a matter of mapping a pathway for a single audience moving as a group.  Theoretically, individual spectators can go wherever they want, follow who ever they want.  What an absolute nightmare for these directors – something very complex on top of a show that is already dense and difficult!  I became aware that the directors had indeed thought through audience traffic patterns, and employed many discreet means of herding spectators in the massive, multi-level space.  Not only did they have to block the actors, they managed to block the bulk of audiences too without even knowing who or how many they would be.  Absolutely astonishing, all the elements they had to think about, all the challenges they had to solve, and the ingenious ways they solved them.

Even with all my academic degrees, all my experience and understanding, all my artistic passion, I will never be of this caliber.  In fact, I am a hack, comparatively, and that’s not self-deprecation.  It’s just true.  In Peter Shaffer’s AMADEUS, Salieri becomes very angry with God because he believes God has made him a mediocrity, and then rubs salt in the wound by granting him perception enough to recognize the sublime without skill enough to create any himself.  That is not me.  

I am eternally grateful for the completely immersive (‘emursive’!!) and humbling experience!  After the show, I tried to express to one of the actors how enamored I was of the whole experience. She was gracious, but I knew it was coming out like something she’d heard a million times before.  I explained further that when a magician does a wonderfully executed trick in a room of astounded lay people, he has accomplished something fantastic.  But when a magician does a wonderfully executed trick in a room full of other magicians, who are watching both as spectators and as peer artists, THAT is when you know you’ve done something legitimately miraculous.

SLEEP NO MORE blew my spectator socks off, touched me to the core in intensely personal ways, taught me a timely lesson in humility, and reminded me of all the reasons I love and want to continue to make art.  Though my artistic offerings will never be as inventive or deft, and the positive impact will occur on a much humbler scale, they are still worthwhile in the grand scheme of things, because art does make a difference in people’s lives – lay people and other artists alike!