Today in directing class I surprised everyone by asking them to bring a box of crayons and lots of scrap paper to class. We were going to color. A group of clever students who had taken this course last year from a different instructor were skeptical and asked me when the play “analysis” was going to be due. They were expecting me to hand them the rubric that would demand some thirty page document with footnote after footnote, fact after fact, research tripping on reasearch. They asked when is the “beat sheet” due? When do I need to turn in my verbs? When do I turn in my list of all possible character traits with 3 quotes each made more substantial and meaty by footnotes. Don’t I need to write an essay on every tea cup, tree, bench, and bible in the play? What’s the deadline for the tome that lays out the play’s arc, the character’s through-line, the dramatic journey, the conflict, the climax and the denouement? Why must a directing analysis be prepared as if it is intended for an English teacher? Is the goal to get a good grade or to have a workable, prepared, flexible springboard to meet the actors?
Well . . . we are just going to color. No pens, pencils or makers – – all must be colors. You can certainly choose any size of crayon box you wish. – be it the Crayola Custom 64 Crayon Box; Glitter Crayons; the 8-Count Washable Dry-Erase Crayons; Fun Effects! Twistable Crayons, or the ever so trendy Star Wars Stormtrooper 84 Count Crayon Boxiest. But for the truly ostentatious and aficionado of conspicuous consumption, there is always the 120 Ultimate WITH Self-Contained Sharpener!
The point is – how crazy is it to analyze the play before you even discover it. Wouldn’t it make more sense to discover a person before sitting down and analyzing them. Approaching a play for the first time is a lot like looking at a forest from far away. The play is in the distance and step by step you get closer and closer to it. Why would you want to spend your first monments in the forest counting trees or pruning a bush? Wouldn’t it be must better to just lean back and say, “My, that forest is pretty?” or “It’s very green. The forest is very green.” Metaphor jump: Before you dismantle the engine of a car to understand how it moves, spend time looking at the line of the car and getting drunk on the smell of new leather.
I have my directing students essentially create a “dream book” of the play and encourage them to color, write, dream, highlight, paste, fold, write questions, place question marks, add stickers, cover moments with little paper flaps of surprise, and on and on. Essentially, I want them to read and play. I hope they never get this right and never get this correct – – otherwise it is a failure.
Let’s color and dream, then we’ll break out pens, pencils and rulers. But later – – much later.