The Director's Chair
(Note: This post has been updated (6) as of 5:27 AM Eastern on 9 Nov. See below.)
In an ongoing cross-blog conversation between playwright and blogger George Hunka of Superfluities and director and blogger Isaac Butler of Parabasis concerning the director's role in the production of a stage play, Isaac writes,
We make a big mistake in theater by confusing The Script with The Play. The Script is the foundation, or the stem cell. Or, as Simon Callow writes about it, like a piece of music score where you only have some of the notes and you're not sure what key its in. It's just words. It's not the finished thing. We have this ridiculous idea of "Serving the Text." Bullshit! The Text serves the Play!
with which — astonishingly — George says he wholeheartedly agrees. Were I a playwright, and knew that a director held the view above expressed by Isaac, I would write into the performance rights for my plays that in no circumstance will those rights be granted any theater company in which that director would have any hand in the production.
I've only a marginal interest in the theater, and so ordinarily would offer no comment on this matter at all. But as regular readers of this blog are aware, I've a great deal of interest in the production of the operas of Mozart and Wagner, and rail often and at length against the grotesque directorial outrages in modern productions of these operas — productions justifiably labeled Eurotrash — that today seem ubiquitous and not to be escaped. And behind such Eurotrash outrages are opera directors who view matters much as does Isaac as reflected in his above quoted remarks; directors who imagine the composer's score is "just words" and notes, and merely "the foundation ... the stem cell" on or from which the director can shape his own "vision." That sort of self-serving, self-important view of things is quite beyond the merely insufferable, and ought not to be tolerated, much less countenanced or, worse, encouraged.
Isaac declares that serving the creator's text is a "bullshit" notion. Well, I've news for directors who think like that. As a first principle they should be reminded that the playwright or the opera composer is the sole creator of his work, and that the playwright's text is the play, just as the opera composer's score is the opera. Any text or score that isn't, isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
Second, they should be reminded that the creators of plays and operas neither need nor require partners or collaborators once the work is finished. (I'm aware of the parlous nature of "finished," but sidestep it for the instant purpose as well as exclude all matters relating to the "fine tuning" of newly written stage works during rehearsals and initial runs, whether stage plays or operas.) What the creators of plays and operas need and require are gifted servants of which the director is one; servants who will faithfully and as free from distortion as possible translate the creator's work from its form on the printed page into its truest, most effective concrete physical form onstage so that the work becomes apprehensible to an audience in a theater as its creator envisioned it, which vision is embodied fully in the text or score itself. When a director steps beyond the bounds of faithful translator he steps into territory in which he has no proper place nor any business being, and by so doing does a gross disservice to the work, the work's creator, and the theater audience alike. In short, a director is doing what he ought to be doing only when he and his work are perfectly transparent middlemen.
Not a palatable view of the matter in this postmodern era, I know. But, then, since the rise of equalitarian democracies elitist views have never been very palatable, have they.
Update (6:00 PM Eastern on 6 Nov): Director and blogger Scott Walters of Theater Ideas responds. My answer to that response can be read in the attached comments section of his post.
Update (10:19 PM Eastern on 6 Nov): Playwright and blogger George Hunka of Superfluities jumps into the fray in the comments section of Scott Walters's post linked in the prior update. My response to Mr. Hunka's comments are there as well.
Update (12:03 AM Eastern on 7 Nov): Scott Walters responds to my comments-section response referred to in the first update to this post in another post on his blog which can be read here. My answer to that response is in the attached comments section.
Update (6:33 PM Eastern on 7 Nov): Oh dear. Mr. Walters, who apparently has difficulty understanding the concept of translation, and arguing ab auctoritate, felt it necessary to post this charming Parthian shot.
Update (8:44 PM Eastern on 7 Nov): Director and blogger Isaac Butler of Parabasis weighs in (under the name of "anonymous") in the attached comments section of this post on Scott Walters's blog, Theater Ideas. My response to his comments can be read there as well.
Update (5:27 AM Eastern on 9 Nov): For a delicious (and gratifying) pendant to this business, see here.
