Directors: Process and Collaboration. Using examples from the PowerPoint, discuss what you've learned about the director's process and the nature of the director's collaboration with the wide variety of artists and crafts people it takes to bring a show to production.To conclude your discussion address the following questions:

• How you will be able to apply what you've learned to judge the director's work in the next production you see?
• How will you be able to apply what you've learned to become a better collaborator in your next group project?
• The director
  The stage director as we know the profession today, is just a little over 140 years old. Modern
  directors can almost certainly trace their profession back to ^ Georg II, the Duke of SaxeMeiningen. ^ He was a wealthy aristocrat with a strong ^ background in the arts. He developed
  the ^ Meininger Ensemble and with that company, almost single-handedly revolutionized the
  way plays were produced from the latter part of the 19th century to present day.
  He served as the company’s ^ producer, director, ^ scenic and costume designer and pushed his
  productions towards realism with his singularly remarkable vision. He believed the costumes ^ ^
  ^ and ^ the scenery should be historically accurate and he had the money to back it up.
  One of his greatest innovations came from his studies of the crowd scenes in paintings of the
  great masters of the art world. He wanted to bring that level of detail and verisimilitude into the
  proscenium. The popular custom of staging was to ^ put the main actors center stage
  surrounded by non-moving supernumeraries. He found this to be unacceptable. The Duke
  wanted to create more life-like stage pictures. He worked out a detailed staging system where
  all the characters on stage were more than just moving props. ^ Even in huge crowd scenes, like
  this one from Julius Cesar, he would give every character a purpose, detailed relationships and
  activities to carry out so they weren’t just standing around like so many mannequins. And since
  he was paying the bills, he got the final say.
  His company ^ toured the capitals of Europe and exerted a great influence on the major
  theorists and Theatre practitioners of the day, including ^ Konstantin Stanislavski and ^ Andre
  Antoine. His aesthetics appealed to their burgeoning interest in realism and naturalistic staging.
  And, really, the rest is history! But what exactly does a director do?
  I like to think of the director as a kind of prism, laser crystal, absorbing energy and light from a
  variety of sources and concentrating it into a single beam of light that eventually becomes a
  concept and then a production.
  The two primary sources of energy and light are the director’s ^ life experiences and ^ their
  education. And any director worth their salt will spend a great deal of time studying and
  receiving energy from ^ audiences in general and even more time trying to understand the
  particular audience they will serve. Knowing your audience helps you understand what types of
  plays you should consider along with many other things.
  Once a ^ play is decided on, a good director begins the Pre-production phase of rehearsal. This
  includes the arduous process of reading, researching, rereading, charting, analyzing, and
  breaking the play into its component pieces You let the play work on your imagination. You
  identify the problems that need to be overcome. You look at the play from the technical ends
  and identify the needs from the scenery, lighting , properties, costume and sound designer’s
  standpoints. A good director reads the play over and over again, until it becomes as familiar as
  your family history. You begin to see characters come to life and move through space as you
  read, always influenced by your ^ Life experiences ^ Education, your ^ understanding of the
  audience and most importantly by the ^ demands of the play itself. This part of the journey is
  sometimes called the gestation period, where the concept is given life and is being nurtured
  consciously and even more profoundly, in the subconscious. At some point, collaborators will need to be added to the mix. This usually ^ starts with
  designers and technicians. It is important to note that every person involved in the project
  needs to begin their involvement with an independent reading and analyzing of the script from
  their particular point of view. This facilitates the free exchange of ideas that is the hallmark of
  true collaboration. The topics of conversations in these design meetings will vary from the
  mundane and practical, to the wildly unimaginable. Each party seeks common ground, but all
  are looking for the best and most promising ideas that suit the play. There may be many
  meetings, or just a few, but soon, renderings, drawings, color pallets, sounds, and fabric

Attachments:

• 1506349882-The director.docx