Mallory: Hello, everyone, welcome back to the director’s corner. I am so excited to share with you my interview I had with Matt August. He shared some incredible advice with you guys and I’m just so excited for you to see it. But before we watch that interview, just so you guys know a little bit more about him, I’m going to share kind of his history, what he’s worked on and how he got into directing just a little bit more about him, so you guys can know that before you watch this interview.
Matt August is a theater director specializing in new plays and musicals, Shakespeare comedies, and holiday classics. Matt has enjoyed directing and developing work on Broadway at theaters all over the country for nonprofit and commercial producers. He was recently a finalist for the 2016 TCG Allan Schneider Directing Award for Mid-Career Directors. His productions have been recognized with nominations and awards from the ovation, Helen Hayes, Mach Bay Area Critics, Broadway World, and Australia’s Help Man Awards.
They have been showcased at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Wendy Williams Show and even performed at the White House. They have appeared on year-end top 10 lists for the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Arizona Republic, Oakland Tribune, Tuckson Sun, San Jose, Mercury News, and NPR KQED.
Matt has been awarded fellowships and residency from the Old Globe Theater Drama League, Oregon Shakespeare Festival acting company, Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, the Juilliard School, San Francisco’s Zen Center, as well as directing and assisting at many other regional theaters. He is a prodigy of theater director Jack O’Brien, working with O’Brien on Broadway for four years. Earlier in August’s career, he worked with many other directors ranging from Gordon Davidson, John Rando and Nicholas Martin to Stephen Wadsworth, Libby Apple, and Robert Wilson.
August has mentored several upcoming directors through the Drama League and SDC Foundation, guest lectured at universities and colleges throughout the country and served on the Drama League, directing fellowship selection committees, and STC board nominating committees. He also sits on the Artistic Advisory Board for the Independent Shakespeare Company in Los Angeles.
Okay! Without further ado, let’s watch this interview.
Interview
Mallory: So we’re just going to jump right into it. Our viewers just learned a little bit about you and about your education and what kind of stuff you’ve worked on, and they’re really lucky to be hearing from you. I’ll tell them that right now. But in our last video, our viewers learned about text analysis, which I know is something you really push in our College courses that directors need to know how to do.
So my question is, what is the biggest piece of advice you would give about analyzing your text?
Matt: Hi. Thanks for having me. I don’t like to call a text analysis. I do it. Text analysis can sometimes seem very academic or dry or like it’s sort of like taking your vitamins and we have to do this, but we don’t really want to. And it’s not the fun part for me. I like to think of it as like that’s my moment to have a love affair with this play and have a love affair with these characters. My biggest piece of advice is love what you’re working on, or is love what you’re working on, because if you don’t love it, you’re going to have a hard time mustering the energy that it really does require to do it and do it.
Well, now, that’s not to say that you need to love it right at the beginning, because you can absolutely find material and then find that you are loving it. And that’s what I… that’s a process that I try to encourage both in myself and my students. But for me, it’s the really fun part. It’s like getting to know a new group of people that aren’t going to kick me out because they can’t and they’re not going to turn around and they’re not going to talk trash about me behind my back so I can read the script.
And I can get to know these characters as a director. That’s the only part of the process from when you get the assignment to do the play through, when you leave the play after opening night, where I’m alone, where I’m alone in the process. And it’s just me and my imagination and the characters and to be able to sit down and do a deep dive into asking the question, who are these characters? Where do they live? What are their circumstances? What are they fighting for?
What are they rebelling against? What do they love? It is for me, probably the most exciting part of the process, and that’s really where I do genuinely fall in love with them because they’re existing in a perfect state in my imagination. Now there are some drama teachers and English teachers who like to call that process text analysis. You can see the difference, you can hear, but just in the way that I sort of talk about really diving into my imagination versus sitting down and analyzing the script, which is not fun.
But when you’re learning about who these people are in their world, it becomes exciting. And if it’s not exciting, then your imagination isn’t being stretched. So either that’s not the right material for you, or you’ve got to do some exercises that are expanding your imagination and giving yourself more permission to imagine the scope of what is possible and what could be.
Mallory: Yeah, perfect. So I will just add to that that on our website on JSK Stories we have so many activities that can help you to expand your imagination like Matt was talking about. All of our writing prompts and all of our things like that will help you to learn to think outside of the box with these characters. And I loved what you had to say about the love affair with your script because text analysis is such a boring term for it, but it’s really actually pretty fun once you get going.
So my next question for you is pretty broad for some of our young directors here, but it’s what qualities does a good director need to have.
Matt: Empathy? They need to be able to react with sensitivity.
And an emotional compass to both guide the emotions of the piece that you’re working on, but also guide the emotions of the people that you’re working with so that they are staying focused on doing the work and not on other things that can distract from the work. So I think a director needs to be able to walk into a room and be able to read the room to see and sense what’s going on with people and immediately be able to assess where they are emotionally, mentally, psychologically and have the tools in their toolbox to be able to work with whatever an actor or a designer or producer is bringing to the table, whatever baggage they are bringing to the table.
The director is able to sort of emotionally jujitsu that and direct it into making progress on the play and on the story and in rehearsal. So I think having a very sensitive emotional radar to be able to empathize with everybody who you’re working with is very important.
Mallory: Perfect. So just a follow up question to that. That kind of goes along with our next question which is: how do you think that our viewers at such a young age can practice empathy? How can they start to learn it at a young age?
Matt: That’s easy. There have been a number of studies done that prove that going to the theater and seeing live theater develops empathy because you’re in an emotional experience with an actor in front of you who is, themselves, going through an emotional experience and theater forces you to tune into what that experience is in a way that television and films don’t, particularly when you stop and pause them or when they break for commercials, you have breaks from the emotional investment in theater. You don’t really get that. So you’re going, though.
You’re going through a process with the actors of an emotional roller coaster ride and that develops and strengthens those skills.
Mallory: Okay, so to kind of move off of that, how do you think that young people can get involved in directing now and in learning the craft?
Matt: By just doing it and doing it wherever you get a chance and whenever you get a chance, do it in your backyard with your friends. Do it for your parents at home. Build models, play games like Katan and Dungeons and Dragons. Play board games. Don’t get away from a video screen, get away from your tabletand see and experience life and always ask questions. Be curious- what’s going on with that? What is the dynamic of what’s going on? What are people thinking? What experiences do other people have?
So asking questions of everything- going out, exploring, explore the forest, explore the mountains, don’t always be in control, get lost, get lost and have to find your way home.
You know, a wonderful director, German director named Werner Herzog, who many of this audience will recognize from The Mandalorian. He’s the German bad guy in season one of Mandalorian. Well, that’s Werner Herzog and Werner Herzog is one of the greatest directors ever in the medium. His films are extraordinary. He does not like the theater personally because he thinks that it’s all about sort of overacting and showcasing. But that’s the theater that he sees.
He’s like I said, he’s a German director, so I think that German style is very big. But he said, you can learn everything about directing that you need to know and storytelling if you went from the top of the Appalachian Trail to the bottom of the Appalachian Trail from beginning to end with only yourself and no money. So if you just went with your backpack and no money and you had to figure out how to survive daily, you at the end of that would know how to tell stories. And that is kind of correct the more you experience and the more you have to navigate challenges as they arise and improvise your way out of them. And survive the more skills you are going to develop in leadership and and I think that that is actually a lesson in leadership, not so much about directing, but it tells you that there’s a process for dealing with challenges. And that’s what all the good stories are about is overcoming adversity.
Mallory: Absolutely. And I’ll just add that practicing overcoming those obstacles really prepares you for all the obstacles that come up in your story as a director that you face may be in your designs that you face with your actors. Practicing doing that is basically what a director does, like you were saying.
So. Just as a final question and to kind of wrap up here, I told you how our audience is fairly young. We’re talking to 13 to 15 year olds here. I know. So what is… just… I think that all young directors, including myself, even at the college age, just want to know what, like, maybe what you did or what’s your biggest piece of advice or what? What can young directors do to get into the industry like you have?
Matt: That’s a great question. I think at… You know, through middle school and through high school, the most important thing is do it because you’re enjoying it and you’re having fun and you’re finding your people. You’re, you know, finding your group, your friends, your tribe, whatever you want to call it. People who you have a common love for and you’re going to just let the love of doing it, overcome any differences that you may have. The great thing about the entertainment industry is how inclusive it is. It accepts all of the weirdos and all of the the, you know, I used to call it, it’s like it’s the industry for the island of Misfit Toys, you know, for everybody who feels like they don’t fit, they fit in the theater because the theater and the entertainment industry is about interesting people, and it’s about interesting points of view coming across and not necessarily popular points of view. It’s about learning how to express yourself and those, you know, either demons or things that you don’t want, that you don’t want out there. It’s a way of expressing and dealing with that stuff in a very productive and positive manner. I would venture to say thatall of us in this field somehow felt like we were outsiders. We didn’t fit in. You know, even those of us who have done very well with our careers and are now like looked at as, “oh well, they’re the establishment”.
We weren’t always the establishment we were, you know, we were the kids in high school who got beat up. We were the kids that got picked on. We were the band guy, you know, the jazz, but we were the ones who got pushed around in gym class and. theater for me became the place where I went to expand my living. Whereas in a lot of other educational and social situations, I would try to diminish my my, my presence and that was incredibly transformative for me. And that led to a journey through college where I just kept asking questions and I, and I just kept being curious. I saw somebody whose work I liked and I just got on their coattails or I worked with them or I watched their work. I went to see everything they did. I found artists whose paintings spoke to me, and so I saturated myself in their work. I found musicians and bands that I felt like tapped into an energy that I had inside of me, and I saturated myself with them and their style. So I just absorbed all of this creativity that was coming from other people and from my peers.
And I was sort of like this sponge. And in so many different ways, I would try to copy it or replicate it. And I did that enough. With different people and different styles like I would imitate the way that somebody behaved or I would try to imitate the music that somebody else was making, or I would try to direct a show or act in a show the way that I had seen it done and what I ultimately realized was- I’m not a mirror. I’m a sponge that is going to squeeze something out. And what I squeeze out is the synthesis of everything that has come in. And that’s my work and that’s my identity. The juice that comes out of that sponge after I’ve soaked everything up is an incredibly, you know, delicious, complicated cocktail of ingredients. But it’s mine and that’s my imprint. That’s my artistic DNA. That’s my psychic DNA. That’s my emotional DNA. And if people want to see that and people like my sense of humor, that’s great. But if they don’t, that’s great, too. Becausethey are part of what made that. So in terms of like advice for, you know, middle and high school kids, it’s just, you know, soak everything up. Don’t turn away any opportunity to learn something new, to be inspired, to go outside of your comfort zone, to go outside of your envelope, make your friends.
They’ll be your lifelong friends. The people that you do theater with in high school. You’ll have a lifelong admiration for those people, even if you don’t take it, even if you don’t keep in touch with them as you get older and life gets away from us, those people that I worked with in high school changed my life. I could list them: Cathy Bernard, Ken Gladstone, Christine Young, Ronnie Karmi, you know, Jeremy Carver. All of us have had wildly different journeys since then. Some of us are still in the end. David Levine. Some of us are still in the industry. Some of us are not. But they had a deep, deep, profound impact on my life. And if I could go back and relive the show that we all did together? Don’t touch this dial. What I didn’t know at the time was that isas fun as it gets. That every show is wonderful. But those first couple of shows were just fantastic. They were. They were just life-changing and cathartic. So enjoy the time that you have now and just soak everything up.
Mallory: Fantastic. Thank you so much for being willing to talk to these young directors, and I hope they realize how valuable your time was and how much they can really learn from you. So thank you. All right, that’s all. Thanks, guys.
[00:09:07] Woo hoo.