I understand that I have never taken a directing class or had any "lessons" but I understand there's obviously a difference between telling the actors where to stand and actually "directing" them and making it your own, adding style etc...

I've directed nonsense scenes like where the script isn't anything obvious and you make the story up to go with the script. (chekovians?) and I completely get how you can add your own style to something like that cause with the exception of the actual words, you have a blank slate.

How do you then create a style or put your mark on a show where it's very obvious that the actors move from point A to point B on certain lines and make it look natural. Maybe i'm just not creative enough, but if two characters were having a back and forth casual discussion, how would you make it interesting? I mean in real life two people would prolly fiddle with something on the table top or look at each other nodding occasionaly.

Any tips?

I am certainly no expert at directing..............but have had some critical success at it .................

When directing you are looking to create "pictures" for your audience. Pictures that help to convey the plot............as well as letting them know your viewpoint about all of it.

Sometimes you do have to wait to achieve the final blocking you want..........letting the actors have their freedom within the boundaries you have given them for movement. Later, though, when things start to get "fine-tuned" then become more specific with the movement. The initial move that seemed fine may no longer be the most effective. So change it. Your actors are actors........you can change things even during the run of a show if you like.

Remember...you want to elicit a response from your audience.....be that through movement or line delivery.......or an intentional pause or move that seems to go against the dialogue (a technique that becomes very powerful if used judiciously). Challenge your audience. They'll surprise you if you give them something to think about.

Don't be afraid to NOT USE stage turns. It's perfectly okay to have an actor's back to the audience...even while speaking if it creates the effect you want.

Hope this helps.

I once worked with a director on a production of Camelot who was very concerned with creating pictures and he did it very well... the trouble was he had a great deal of difficulty getting people to morph from one to the next. Additionally, his pictures did not always convey the story or the emotion of what was happening. However, the show did make for some beautiful photos. Unfortunately, it was pretty much univerally panned by critics and the audience stayed away in droves.

This is not to say the pictures approach doesn't work... I use the approach myself and like it. I was looking more at JCCTony's concern for natural movement. The key to much of what we're talking about is body language; making movement suit the emotion and the characterization developed by the actor and the director. One of the signatures of shows I direct is the natural look and movement of the actors... I hate when the actors' movements contradict the emotion and the characterization.

Now perhaps I am making a mistake by differentiating between movement and picture blocking, but never having taken a class in directing, I don't know the language as well as I should. I think an argument could be made that we're talking about the same thing from different angles and perhaps I'm too focused on the actual movement issues, whereas Doug and Ron are approaching it from a pictures angle. Maybe part of the reason I'm writing this (fool that I am) is that, as a photographer, I think of pictures as a static display rather than movement. Like I said, vocabulary.

At any rate, JCC, take the best from this discussion, figure out your pictures and make sure the transitions from one to the other are natural and make sense in the context of the play, the emotion and the characterizations and you won't go wrong. Make sense to the rest of you guys?

A couple of things come to mind. First off, the blocking notes in a script are generally the blocking from the first production... they are not necessarily the playwight's. They may not even work on your version of the set. I always tell my actors to ignore everything in italics and that I'll tell them which italics they should read. I block a show based on the set and my interpretation of what the show requires. Most scripts' blockign notes are incomplete anyway. I've worked with many a director using those notes who has been painted into a corner and found himself asking, "okay, but when does he GET over there?"

Nobody wins directing awards solely with blocking... in fact, I'd venture to say that blocking is only a small part of it. What's more important is characterization and vision. How do you see these characters? What are the underlying emotions and motivations? A director has a profound influence on a play. The playwright merely provides the words. You know as well as I do that delivery is 9/10's of the battle.

An example: I worked with a very good director a few years ago on Dearly Departed. Very funny show. However, the director saw the show as a commentary on death, his father, something... anyway, he took much of the comedy out of the show, without changing the piece at all. He did it through characterizations, changes in delivery, etc. He added music to every scene change (there were quite a few) and insisted that it be played at least to a certain point so the audience could absorb the message of the song. The cast, particularly the women, whose comedy had been downplayed, was not particularly happy about the changes, but hey, he's the director. He turned a nice little dark comedy about a family dealing with the loss of the patriarch into a comedy/drama about male bonding in the face of loss.

The show turned out to be very different that the one I read... a true testament to what a director who knows what he's doing can accomplish. I didn't always agree with this director, but I have to admire what he did and what he taught me.

If you want to "make a show your own," you need to pick a piece that really means something to you, something that grabs you right in the heart. You have to read it over and over, asking yourself why the characters do the things they do, where did they come from (before the play takes place), where are they going? What are the relationships? Go into rehearsal with ideas about those things and talk about them with your actors. I always take at least one rehearsal to talk about the characters in the show... but I don't do a whole lot of talking. I ask questions of my actors. Why does your character react this way? Does your character have a college education? Where does your character see him(her)self in five years? I ask questions about the script and the motivations in it. I make them pretty open ended, no right or wrong answers necessarily, just something to get the dicussion going. Usually, it ends up out of my hands, with everybody jumping in. Then it's up to me to guide it, asking questions; " have you looked at it this way? Considered these lines? Doesn't that change what you're saying?" I find that if I waste half a rehearsal on this process, I gain at least two in how well my actors understand their characters and my vision of them.

Of course, in a way, I'm not really answering your question. You have to find that vision that makes your show special. It helps if the show really means something to you. But don't try to change the playwright's intent just for the sake of doing things differently... that's how we get Shakepeare being done in Nazi uniforms and Aida set in the Star Wars future. Granted, those ideas may work for someone, but I prefer my Shakepeare in an Elizabethan setting and my opera far, far away.

One more thing; we're doing community theater here. Your responsibility is to your audience, to give them a show they can enjoy. It's also to your organization, to not annoy the audience to the point where they don't come back. This is entertainment. Don't try to force a show to become something it isn't... unless you have a clear idea of what you are trying to say with it.

I realize this has all been pretty general, but without knowing more specifics about your show, we can't offer a whole lot... and even if we did, how would you know what was your vision... and what was ours?