Theatre is a colloborative art form

Someone recently asked me if I prefer to write or direct. Let’s see: writing is a solitary pursuit, but it gives me the huge pleasure of being able to make up private worlds in private. And it reminds me of the old days when I first began to choreograph, and it seemed logical to begin with my own body, and so I made a series of solos. I recall many happy hours in front of the mirror in various studios messing with movement ideas. When I began to work with other dancers I was enormously intimidated: I felt horribly self-conscious about my movement vocabulary, and was sure they would find it ridiculous or crazy.

But working with actors is very different: once they begin to “embody the text” (jargon alert) they have remarkable insights into the script you have done your best to edit on your computer screen. And, as intelligent, experienced professionals they also have lots to offer about the story and the scenes of which it is composed, simply by being in the room while it is being read and staged. I like to think of the actors as the play’s first audience; or a collective of dramaturgs with on-the-job training. If one’s priority is really to arrive at the best possible show—and not to service one’s vanity by making the script holy writ that mere actors have no right to comment upon—one ignores the potentially wonderful improvements intelligent actors can make to one’s script.

During the past week, the first of our rehearsal process, I have been blown away by the acuity of some of the suggestions made by certain actors in the company. The most recent occurred today, Saturday—we work six days a week in the theatre (who else does that?)—when two of the actors proposed, with some trepidation, that I cut the epilogue, something I had been thinking of as well, but hardly dared to admit, even to myself.

The penultimate scene has now acquired the potential to become very powerful indeed emotionally, and the cute, clever epilogue would seem paltry by comparison, and diminish utterly the force of the scene preceding it. As Doris Humphrey said, The ending is 40% of the dance, and the same applies to theatre. In the course of conversing with the two of them a whole new ending for the play swam into view. I offered them my gratitude for giving me, and the show, this gift. And they expressed theirthanks for being given the chance to bring their own critical insights to the process of play-making.

Theatre is a collaborative art form—or it SHOULD be.