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 will be teaching you the fundamentals of directing as I have learned them at my University and through personal experience. Along with that, we will get to 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 Rachel Chavkin.
Rachel Chavkin is an American Theatre director who has done a lot of work, but is most popularly known for tony-award winning musical Hadestown.
I want to talk about 3 things that make Rachel special.
First- let’s talk about her advice for young directors.
I was lucky enough to participate in a Q&A directly with Rachel, and one thing she made very clear was this: she doesn’t give advice.
This might sound selfish at first, or even silly, but honestly it’s possible Rachel is doing us a favor.
When we seek advice, sometimes it’s great, but sometimes we get too caught up in what other people think and forget to carve our own path.
Second- she’s not afraid to take risks.
Rachel is one of my inspirations for not being afraid to make changes and bold choices. When she was directing Hadestown, she realized there were many elements of the designs that she didn’t like.
Because of this- she changed a lot of things, and she changed them with about a week’s notice.
It takes a special kind of person to be willing to take that kind of risk, and work hard to make sure that it pays off. And it did, the designs were all beautiful, creative, and told the story wonderfully.
And third- she’s a team player. While Rachel loves working as a director, she got her start doing devised theatre. Devised theatre is basically creating art as a group, and doing so very spontaneously.
She created this group in college with a desire to create theatre- not to make money. Which they didn’t. But they do now!
She still works with them to this day. This group is called the TEAM and it’s something she’s very proud of and they create beautiful work together.
That’s just a little about Rachel, and I hope her passion can spark something in you like it did for me. Thank you so much for watching! See you later!