[music]
I think being a director, you have to have simultaneously a huge ego and no
ego so the pugio is the audacity to say that what delights me and tickles me
will delight other people. And if I lose touch with that delight then I have lost.
And if I'm doing- making decisions for the wrong reasons which is second
guessing what either a producer or even a playwright or an audience is going
to think I've lost my way.
You are transported to both past and future.
Past in terms of like juice. In terms of life In terms of energy.
Future in terms of optimism and so in some ways and I also feel that in terms of directing.
As much as I study and try to be a better director all the
time and look at things and read and compare and think somehow times I think
my directing hasn't changed at all from when I was 15 and in my first production
which was The Bald Soprano and that the same sense of space and time exists
inherently so I don't actually ever get any better or worse it's the same always, oddly enough.
We shiver at the word concept. There's a way of approaching
a play that if you if you decide what it is before you do it
then you have made the play smaller then you. And you actually want the
ability to be bigger than anything you can imagine I'm sure we agree on that
and the minute you say it happens inside of this parameter you know it's
reducing so that the audience is guessing I'm doing a guessing game
rather than encountering a play and it's in its largess.
And it should- we should approach a play I think as a canvas it's much bigger than you not
something that you can control.
I think that every time I approach a
play there has to be something that
And I won't do the play unless this happens, it's an alchemical something that happens in me
that makes me have a hunch or maybe a leap something that I'm even afraid to
say to the actors or designers because I think it's really
dumb but an idea that maybe it might be X that everybody looks at me like I'm a
little crazy and then it turns out that that without the leap and it's true in
any creative work that without some sort of leap nothing happens an actor knows
that every scene they do need some kind of leap involved or else
nothing is engendered but there has to be some hunch that then can be proven
wrong but you put something out and my job is to start a snowball in motion so
that other people can add to it or or put obstacles in front of it or
challenge it or change it. Ultimately ideas which a lot of people glom on to
are cheap you know you can find ideas every time you open a magazine there's a
hundred and fifty ideas about anything so you choose a few but then the then
the terminology I like to use in rehearsal is what is it what is it
really in other words I'll say this is what it is but then if you don't say
but what is it really then there's no there there as Gertrude
Stein said about Oakland California there's nothing that actually is
engendered so it's you certainly have to propose ideas a world even a concept but
that's cheap that's not what you're in the room for so if it becomes about
fulfilling that idea then then that's really not interesting but as a
launching pad I think you do need something to communicate.
I spend a great deal of time first just in the pressure cooker of my own imagination
and digressions you know sleeping sometimes or we're napping
while I'm researching something will lead in directions and if I haven't done
that work I haven't earned that earned the right to walk in the room I can't
just go walk into a room and say let's collaborate. I mean my work is
exceedingly collaborative and I use everybody in the room and I am
interested in all their opinions all the time...
but to create an atmosphere in
a room where everybody feels heard means you have to listen and when you say what
do you do you set up an environment where actually
people feel heard and that's something you can't actually fake.
Real listening. And I think that is the- I think if
there's two parts of the recipe for collaboration one is to listen and the
other is to respect. Seriously respect the people who are in
the room with you not pretend to and find a way that you actually respect
them...