The Director and

the Producer 5

© T Charles Erickson

Copyright © McGraw-Hill Education.  All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
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The Theatre Director

• Works most closely with the performers
• Also works with the playwright (if alive)
and the design team
• To audience, director’s work can be less
obvious
• Trains in many ways, either through
experience as actor or by studying in
academic institutions

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 5-3

The Traditional Director

• Conventional theatre begins with a text:
– Also referred to as the script
– The text provides the foundation for
performers, directors, and designers to
create.
– The playwright (or dramatist) is responsible
for this expression of the human condition.
– But how can we begin to discuss how the
playwright creates a script?

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The Traditional Director

• Choosing a script
• The “spine” of the play
• The style of the production
• The directorial concept

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The Directorial Concept

• Concept and period
• Concept and central image
• Concept and purpose

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Evolution of the Director

• George II, duke of Saxe-Meiningen
– 1825-1914
– First director?
• The function of the director has been
around since the Greeks
– Aeschylus directed his own plays
– Molière did too
– Actor-managers

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The Director and the Dramaturg

The duties of the dramaturg include:

– Discovering promising new plays

– Working with playwrights on script development
– Identifying significant plays from the past
– preparing material for teachers
– Writing articles for the programs
– researching past criticism and interpretations of these
plays.

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 5-8

The Auteur and Postmodern

Directors
• An auteur director undertakes oversight of
every possible aspect of the production,
thereby making the show his or her own.
• Postmodern directors are identified
through:
– A deconstructionist view of the script
– An abandonment of narrative or linear
structure
– The use of unfamiliar, cross-gender,
multicultural casting
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 5-9

The Director and the Production

• The physical production

– Costume
– Scene
– Lighting
– Sound

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 5-10

The Director and the Production

• Casting
– Fitting performers into roles based on their:
• Personalities
• Physical characteristics
– Typecasting
• When a performer closely resembles in real life the
character to be enacted
– Casting against type
• When a performer is cast in a role that he/she
does not appear to be right for
• Usually done for comic or satiric purposes

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 5-11

The Director and the Production

• Rehearsals
– Listening to and watching the performers as
they go through their lines and moves on
stage

• Blocking
– Deciding when and where performers move
and position themselves on stage

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 5-12

The Director and the Production

• The director as the audience’s eyes

– During rehearsals, the director sees the
production from the spectator’s point of view.
– The director helps performers to show the
audience exactly what they intend to show.
– The director underscores specific scenes
through:
• Visual composition
• Stage pictures

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 5-13

The Director and the Production

• Movement, pace, and rhythm

– The director must attempt to control the pace
and rhythm within a scene and the rhythm
between scenes.
– The director must instill in the performers a
strong sense of inner rhythm.

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 5-14

The Director and the Production

• Technical rehearsal
– Done just before public
performances begin
– Performers are onstage
in their costumes, with
scenery and lighting for
the first time
– Run-through of the
show from
beginning to end © T. Charles Erickson

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 5-15

The Director and the Production

• Dress rehearsal
– Occurs just after the
technical rehearsal but
before the first preview
or tryout
– Purpose: to put all the
elements together
– Performed as if the
audience is present
© T Charles Erickson
– Gives everyone involved a
sense of what the performance will
be like

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 5-16

The Director and the Production

• Previews
– The production is tried before a group of
spectators
– Also called tryouts
– Discover which parts of the play are
successful and which are not

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 5-17

The Director’s Power and Responsibility

• The director must bring together all parts

so that the total effect will enlighten us,
move us, or amuse us.

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This chart indicates

the many people that
the director must
work with and the
many elements that
must be coordinated.

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 5-19

The Producer or Manager

• The producer/manager is the behind-the-
scenes counterpart to the director.
• The producer or manager is responsible
for the business aspects of the production.

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 5-20

The Producer or Manager

• The commercial producer has the following duties:
– Raising money to finance the production
– Securing rights to the script
– Dealing with the agents for the playwright, director, and
performers
– Hiring the director, performers, designers, stage crews
– Dealing with theatrical unions
– Renting the theatre space
– Supervising the work of those running the theatre: in the
box office, auditorium, and business office
– Supervising the advertising
– Overseeing the budget and the week-to-week financial
management of the production
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 5-21

The Producer
This chart, which shows
the producer at the top,
indicates the people the
producer must deal with
and the numerous
elements he or she
must coordinate.

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

 5-22

Noncommercial Theatres
• The producer:
– In a nonprofit theatre, also known as the
executive director or managing director
– Responsible for:
• Maintenance of the building
• Budget
• Publicity
• “Front of the house” duties

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Completing the Picture

• Playwrights put the words and ideas.

together to form a complete picture
• Performers bring the picture to life.
• Directors integrate the disparate artistic
elements.
• Producers coordinate the business side
of the production.

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.