Hello everyone! Welcome to the Director’s Corner. My name is Mallory and I’m here to teach you about all things directing.
In this series, I teach you the fundamentals of directing as I have learned them at my University and through personal experience. Along with that, we interview directors that work directly in the theatre and film industry to hear all about their techniques and advice for young directors.
Today we are going to be talking about knowing your story. The boring words for this are “text analysis”.
Before you start doing anything on a show you are directing, you will want to ask for the script. Directors need time to have their “love affair” with the script and the story.
So what does this love affair look like? No, you won’t be needing to take your script to a romantic dinner, but you need to get to know it.
The first step you can take is to read your script all the way through. Read the introduction, the stage directions. If there are words on the page, read them.
Oftentimes there will be words you don’t understand, so have a dictionary next to you as you read. If it’s Shakespeare, you may want to have a Shakespeare dictionary, as well.
This will not be the last time you read this script, but now you at least know the basic story.
After this we’ll move into the analysis. Why is this important?
In order to best tell your story, you need more than good costumes and a nice set, you need a story to tell. In order to tell it well, you need to know it inside and out.
Directors are the main storyteller when producing a play. They need to know their stuff in order to choose designers, cast their show, create a concept, block, create a set, and so much more.
There is so much to uncover in regards to analysis, so watch for more in future videos, but here’s the basic things you will want to look at.
This form of analysis is based on the Francis Hodge analysis.
Given circumstances: What is the environment like? Is it hot? Where are we? What city are we in? What year is it? What is the political and economic environment like? The social environment? Is there racism or sexism in this world?
Dialogue: What does the dialogue sound like? Is there a specific dialect? Does it rhyme? What does it say about where we are? About the economic status of the characters?
Characters: For each character, what do they care about? What motivates them? What are they afraid of? Are they polite, improper? Are they honest?
Idea: What is the meaning of the title? What are the themes of the play? What are some messages this story needs to convey? What are some quotes from the story that sum up the theme?
Mood: What are the moods conveyed in this story? What kind of tone does it have? Is it happy? Spooky? Dramatic?
This is a very brief place you can start when analyzing your script. It’s very important to do this work before you start designing or blocking your show so that you know each element is contributing to the telling of the story.
Join me in two weeks as I interview my professor and Broadway director, Matt August. We will talk to Matt more about text analysis and get to know his techniques and story.
Don’t forget to check out all of the theatre and film tips and information we have at jskstories.com.
Thanks so much for joining me today and have a fantastic couple of weeks. See you soon!