Director's Note- 100 Saints You Should Know

100 Saints You Should Know is in technical rehearsals all week. We preview on Wednesday and open on Thursday! In honor of this, I thought I'd post my director's note. Enjoy. :)

A Note from the Director...

        Albert Schweitzer once said, “We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.”  Feel free to read that again if you need to. I did a double take the first time I read it. Which, interestingly enough, is about the same way I reacted after my first time through Kate Fodor’s heartbreaking 100 Saints You Should Know. As I devoured the material, I was struck by the poignant themes of longing and connection. Amidst the darkness, there was beauty to be seen in these characters. I resonated Matthew’s longing for human connection, the ability to sit down with someone and just empty yourself to them. Matthew is yearning for human connection, a horizontal relationship built off of trust, love, and the ability to confide in another person. 

        Theresa, on the other hand, searches for something entirely different. Theresa, after years of sour relationships and reckless emotional ties, searches for a deeper connection with something greater than herself. Even as a Christian artist, I find myself frequently wondering if there’s something out there I’ve yet to discover in my relationship with God. It’s easy for these questions to weigh on the heart and pull us into despair, not unlike the despair we meet Matthew in. Theresa, however, does something really imperative. She seeks answers. Her pursuit of love and connection, while frightening, is a dedicated one. Her heartfelt longing for a vertical connection  rings true among all humans, whether they practice a faith or not. 

        As my team and I have spent time with these people, we’ve truly fallen in love with them. I’m so encouraged by this group’s ability to see all the darkness in these people’s lives and rather than running from them, they are willing to shoulder their burdens with them and tell their story. It is my prayer that the questions asked in this play will lead to impassioned pursuits of answers and, even more, examples. 

I can’t think of a better final project with ACU Theatre. This university has provided me with a safe place to build the most incredible relationships of my young life. I’ve been free to openly explore my faith and pursue truth in spite of fear or uncertainty. I don’t have the words to express my gratitude. The people that have walked alongside me through this season, and even just this project, have shown me the power of community and connection. We are all so much together… And, in the darkest times, the times of severe alienation or loneliness, those very relationships have pointed me to the Father. He is my surge of the heart, my cry of recognition and love. What beautiful peace is to be found when the Father and his children love in tandem. 

-Matthew Silar

Director 

Creating a Safe Environment.

I've asked a lot from my cast over the past few days. We've had to work some pretty heavy moments and in some pretty tedious ways. We've done some alba emoting work, which is emotional recall through breathing patterns and postures rather than memory recall. I've worked through Act One at almost a literal snails pace.

Last evening, I asked my cast, especially a specific member of my cast, to trust me as we worked through two pretty potent moments in the play. It's a scene that calls for a lot of controlled chaos, one actor running all over the place with another exhibiting some intimidating exposure and the rest of the cast supporting these two characters. We walked through the scene step-by-step, moment-by-moment. I continued adding conditions such as volume and the addition and subtraction of spoken subtext. A character dresses throughout the scene and eventually that was incorporated in, creating another layer of physical action and an added element of vulnerability.

As we worked through the final moments of the scene, a character is written to basically have an anxiety attack and shut down in a flood of tears. But, as any good director knows, you can't coach emotions. All I have the power to do is  encourage the choices they make but at the end of the day, if their sad, it is only because they have chosen to fight for what they want and they aren't getting it. If they're happy, it has to be because somebody gave them what they wanted. If they're mad, somebody has to have taken something from them and they have to choose to fight to take it back. It's all their choice. I can't tell them "be sad here." (I mean, I suppose I could, but I would like to keep my position as their director...)

You know what got me through this intimidating, emotional evening? A tiny bit of advice a dear friend gave me. She said, [more or less] "You can't control what they do, just the environment in which they do it." Great advice. If I were to expand it a little more, I would probably say "The director's job is not to control the way the actor feels, but rather create an environment from them to feel, fully."

The people in 100 Saints You Should Know are fighting for some really tough things to be missing. They're fighting for love, comfort, stability, structure... Some people get what they want. Some people don't. Some people fight back. Some people are stripped of what they want and never get it back. Regardless, all these people fighting for these things is going to elicit some emotional responses. As a director, I get to take my actor's hand, say "trust me" and create a space to let them express how they're feeling in a full, rich, SAFE way.

It's an honor to be trusted by these people. But more honoring is what they are willing to share in a safe environment.

The 3 Rehearsal Day

Today, I had two separate rehearsals for Musical Theatre Workshop. 2 back to back rehearsals for Parade. If you don't know Parade, who are you? But, since you probably do know it, you know that "All the Wasted Time" is one of the most amazing and heart-wrenching duets ever put on stage. Well, I had the immense pleasure (and emotional distress) of working on that one song with two separate partners for a majority of my afternoon. It wasn't fair.

Then, I had an hour off before my evening rehearsal for 100 Saints You Should Know. We're on to Act Two now, which is crazy. The first scene in Act Two has a pretty pivotal moment and, coincidentally, the young man playing Matthew in 100 Saints is also one of the assigned students playing Leo in my Parade scene. So, he and I went through this emotional trauma together today, which is pretty great.

Anyway, as I went through my day, it was easy to bring up the fact that I was bouncing between three rehearsals. I wasn't going to get much of a break and tackling three heavy projects had me craving a comedy. But, I realized, thankfully early on in the day, that I had two choices. I could either allow the rehearsals to weigh me down, or I could accept them as life giving. After all, that's why we do this whole "art" thing, right? Artists create and "work" because it is one of the things the Lord has tailor made to breathe life into them. So, I chose to celebrate. I know that I will likely face a season in which I'll be dying for even one rehearsal. When that time comes, the Lord will provide me with other life giving outlets, aside from his infinite and perfect goodness, of course. For now, I'm wrapping up my time in college and I get to work on projects consistently. It is easy to look at a packed schedule and complain, but the truth is, I love what I do. I'm glad I got to do it all day. Still, I had to choose to operate under that understanding.

The result was HOURS of inspired and worthwhile work. I left all three rehearsals having accomplished everything and I had set out to accomplish and my actors made beautiful discoveries and some really truthful moments. As a director, I get to set the tone of the rehearsal I enter and by recognizing what a GIFT it is to work on these projects today, the morale was high and the reward was evident.

It's not always easy to make that choice. I've had my fair share of rehearsals run by an exhausted version of myself. But, I look forward to facing that temptation in the future and remembering what a productive and worthwhile day I had today.

Are you listening?

Why do so many directors refuse to listen to their show?

This is partially from just having had my first read through for 100 Saints. I had my script with me to follow along but I spent a majority of the read through just hearing my actors breathe life into the script for the first time. I jotted down so many notes and thoughts because there were discoveries to be made in this first read through.
I know some directors don't even take the time for a read through.
How does that work?
If we don't take the time to sit down and just hear the words (and music, often) we're bringing to life, we're going to miss some pretty obvious moments and when we bypass moments that are meant to be punctuated, highlighted, or repeated, the audience will feel it. They'll feel as if something is missing and, likely, they'll spend the next few moments trying to work themselves out of the awkward funk the director didn't even know existed. Can you imagine if Elphaba stood still as she belted out "It's ME!" every night on the stage of the Gershwin? Of course not. The audience would feel so uncomfortable! She ascends to the skies on that moment because she has nowhere she can possibly go but UP! Yet, mark my words, some day, somebody will leave a poor helpless college girl, painted green, to fend for herself as an orchestra swells around her and her emotional center almost explodes out of her nose. Why? Because, the audience does a better job at listening than the director.

I've been playing with this through Light in the Piazza  as well. For those who don't know the show, shame on you.
I kid.
Kind of. (But seriously, listen to it now.)
Easily one of the most breathtaking scores to hit a Broadway stage in the last 20 years. As we've been working through Statues and Stories, I've been faced with moments in which my actresses, as beautiful and talented as they are, have said the dreaded sentence "I don't know what to do." Now, in a play, often times my first reaction would be to just spout out an idea and then see if it worked. That's alright. But, what I have really found to be helpful, especially with the integration of music, is to stop for a moment and have them sing through the moment we're stuck on. As they sing through, or my pianist plays through, I listen for what the music is telling me needs to happen. And that is when my mind starts racing. They are repeating that melody line. Is this repeat because they have yet to achieve what they want? Did they look for what they want over here already? Is the repeat a celebration of having achieved what they want? If they have it, why are they still here? Another character has begun to sing, who needs to join whom? There is a crescendo. This character is getting closer to what she wants. Is she where she needs to be in order to receive it? Is she moving closer to it? The music is building, can we accomplish the personal build without movement or is movement necessary? 

More and more questions flood my mind in simply taking the time to listen to the play (musical) again. And, you know what I have found? Most of the time, the answer is in the text (or score or lyrics etc)

I'm excited about implementing this as we begin blocking 100 Saints tonight. I'm looking forward to getting stuck in some moment and listening before jumping in to an experiment. I bet the answer is already there if we can just take the time to listen for it.