Directorfest was a dream- an intense burst of creativity with a stellar team of artists. After Max, Birgit, Paul and I had put away an appropriate number of drinks at Opening Night, I gathered them and said, “I’ve been a part of some hit shows in my life, and this is what a hit show feels like. We did good.”

I lucked out. I enlisted a young writer who I trust implicitly to create a new play for two of my favorite actors. Max tailored the script to their unique skills and charms. With only a week’s rehearsal, you have to choose your challenges, and I knew for my Directorfest, I wanted the challenge of unpacking super-charged language with two brilliant minds, both athletes at pairing text with thoughts. The designers and I created a steam-lined “non-black” box to contain the action. I was very pleased with the work overall: It was a dynamite representation of my Drama League experience and my artistic point-of-view.

Pictures: www.knudadams.com/gun-logistics

I’m sad my fellowship is over. If they’d have me back, I’d gladly do the whole thing over again. My 2012 was ridiculously action packed, much to the credit of the Drama League. I’m still mystified as to how I managed to squeeze it all in! Without time to mourn the end of any one project, I saved up a year’s worth of post-show slump to come crashing down on body and soul as soon as Directorfest ended. As I ate my way through the holidays, a scary question- an annoying Christmas companion- echoed through my thoughts: “What next?”

2013 promises some exciting projects of its own. But I’m also enjoying the time to reflect on my Drama League fellowship. I learned so much:

I learned that directing doesn’t have to be lonely.
I learned that blogging is hard and sucky, but formulating your experiences into coherent sentences is an unreplicable teaching exercise.
I learned that casting is indeed 90% of the work, if you include negotiating scheduling conflicts.
I learned that you need to trust pros to their own processes.
I learned that you can be persistent and relentless and kind and appreciative at the same time.
I learned that producers are allies. And creative allies at that.
I learned that you can do it all, but you can’t do it all at the same time.
I learned that every director thinks of their work as being immediate, spontaneous, and visual, and that we need more precise terms to describe what we do.
I learned that- due to psychological mechanisms I would prefer not to unpack- I like assisting tough directors.
I learned that I am intrinsically a tough director, so I can stop acting like one.
I learned that the best way to get what you want is to tell people what you want.
I learned that people have faith in me.
And I learned that I really needed to hear that.
And I learned that I don’t need to hear that.

Last week was the wrap up of the official Drama League fellowship of 2012. It has been a truly amazing experience. I’ve learned so much about the industry. I’m impassioned by the people I’ve met along the way and I’ve learned so much about myself as an artist and person in the world. I don’t want the experience to end!

At the start of my fellowship, I had the chance to assist Drama League Alum Davis McCallum while he was directing February House at The Public. Davis was extremely supportive while I was applying to the fellowship. He was extra encouraging during my interview process. I’m forever grateful to him for his generosity. I found out I was accepted into the program in the middle of rehearsals for February House, I whispered the good news to him on a break. He was bursting with joy because he found out I was accepted earlier that day, and he promised not to break the news to me until it was official. It was a matter of weeks before the fellowship began. On the first day of my fellowship, I hugged Davis goodbye before leaving rehearsals, and went to my first Drama League activity. After our last Drama League meeting, Knud, David, Cat and I joined Roger for three pies of pizza at John’s pizzeria (yum!), then headed over to 2nd Stage to see Water By the Spoonful, the Pulizter Prize winning play which is being directed by Davis. I hugged him hello and that was how I wrapped up my last Drama League activity. That’s called a full circle and I take it as a beautiful and auspicious sign. I began and ended my fellowship in two different professional New York City theatres. I began and ended my fellowship interacting with a director I admire and respect greatly. I’m so appreciative of the journey I’ve had this year, and I’m thrilled for the journey ahead. ***Christopher rides off into the sunset; always bright, and looking toward the future***

Last night was opening night for our DirectorFest project. I can hardly believe how fast it all went. And I can barely wrap my mind around the mileage the designers were able get out of their budget to put together four very different productions. Lately as a director, I keep recognizing this feeling I get in the middle of the process. I take in all of the hard work that everyone is putting in to their perspective roles, and in this moment I wonder how it will all add up. Will it be the glory of a vision fulfilled, or will it fall short of the dream. In an episode of the classic tv show Laverne & Shirley, they win a grocery shopping spree where they have three minutes to grab all of the gorceries they can. At the end of three minutes, whatever they can put over the finish line they get to keep, free of charge. During the spree, Laverne and Shirley load their basket, and themselves, with so many groceries that they can’t rush to the finish line. They literally fall short at the end of the race. In the end, all they can manage to reach across the line is a box of fish sticks and a box of Scooter Pies. Now that I’m over the line I can say with satisfaction that I got more than fish sticks and Scooter Pies; I got a big cart full of groceries.

I wanted to share my appreciation to everyone who worked so hard during tech this past week. I wanted to celebrate their work to make the vision of Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry and the DirectorFest event a reality. Thank you notes were the way to go. I included all the design team, cast and crew, and thanked them for their efforts towards everything we have on that stage. I also wrote a note to thank Tennessee Williams too. I handed out notes at half hour but Tennessee never showed up. (Or did he.) Here is what my note said to him:

Dear Tennessee,

Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry is a story that’s epic and humane. The characters are mythic and mundane. Your words are sacred and profane. I now know life from both sides of this experience and I bring a piece of Moony’s world into my own.

                                                       Thank you, Thank you,

                                                            Christopher Windom

What did I learn? This week I learned a deeper meaning to the phrase “The joy is in the work”. I believe that what I focus on grows, and this week I chose to focus on the joy and fun of theatre making. And in ways epic and mundane, joy and fun came bouncing back to me. Joy in the work isn’t something that always exists, but it is something I can create and bring into the room.

Today was another day of tech in the theatre. And a day to introduce the actors to the stage and theatre space. The conversation and collaboration with the designers continued. Layered into the process this morning was my conversation with the actors about bringing the work we’ve been doing in the rehearsal hall into this new setting. My actors took to the set like water to sponges. I think they were happy to not have to work so hard to imagine the world they were acting in. Now their imagination can focus on making the text and relationships come to life, supported by the set, props and costumes. My actors and I experienced the theatre space and then we went back to the rehearsal room for a quick rehearsal. Our conversation felt rich and informed by the morning.

A favorite experience today was getting my actors into their costumes. The life and history that costume designer Whitney Locher has embodied into these garments is so helpful to my actors. In the world of this story, the level of distress in the set and costumes is essential. Every stain has a story. Every tear on a garment and even a well-placed hole in the sock provides information about each character’s life and lifestyle. Seeing the actors embrace this part of the process is a great joy.

“Stephen Sondheim has a great rule,” James Lapine said in tonight’s Drama League members chat, “The person with the most passion wins.” He was talking about collaboration: That if you’re debating an element of production, the person with less stake in the matter should concede. I think that’s a great guide to negotiating compromise between creative partners, but it becomes difficult to apply to the design process if an anxious director feels he’s more passionate about every production detail.

Earlier today, I had dry tech for my DirectorFest play Gun Logistics. We’re in great shape, and I’m amazed by the quality work the designers achieved on their quartered budget. I think every director prioritizes one design element, and mine is the set: As a former sculptor and installation artist, I obsess over shape, color, and space. Seeing our brilliant set onstage for the first time, I thought back to the myriad conversations, inspirations, and negotiations that brought about the final result. I thought about how hard the design team worked to satisfy the passions of four very different directors.

You can enlist support by sharing your vision, but you risk alienation when you wield your passion as a weapon, and mistake bullying for ardor. In most cases, a director’s passion cannot increase a budget, move a wall, or fix a scheduling conflict. How do you- as Sam Gold would say- defend your taste, and still approach the work with openness, flexibility, and appreciation? How do you make clear to your designers that a well executed version of Option B or C is much better than a compromised version of Option A? Because sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too, but that cake needs to come from a rental house or else it needs to be pie.

I hate the word passion. It reminds me of bad cover letter writing. “My passion for passions is my most passionate passion.” I think my aversion to gushy displays of emotion has prevented me from speaking honestly about the work I care about and the choices I make. I catch myself in rehearsal saying “I feel this” or “I feel that” when I don’t feel it at all. I think it or I know it. By softening my vocabulary, I betray my Myers Briggs personality type and subconsciously adopt America’s recent contempt for intellectualism.

Perhaps a director’s vision is merely- ha, merely- a combination of his passion, insight, and taste. Is it true of life as well as debate, that the person with the most passion wins? I have no trouble talking about my insights and my taste, but in my presentation, I might be missing that crucial third ingredient. There’s no excuse for emotional embarrassment. The person with the most passion wins.

Today we had dry tech for DirectorFest….it all went by so quickly!

And it was so fun! As I was walking away from the theatre this morning after our tech time, I kept replaying the two fast hours I spent in the theatre. Seeing all of the crew and designers so focused, and moving so efficiently to get the technical elements of the show into place. It was fun to see a three dimensional version of the set that I’ve been imagining for the past week. Seven months ago, this moment seemed so far away, and now that it’s here, I can hardly believe it’s really happening. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my stage manager Christina Lowe. She helped us all stay on track by focusing on the most important details of the show. During dry tech, the theatre was like a charivari of activity. It was a flurry of lighting cues that lighting designer Melissa Mizell was throwing on to Julia Noulin-Merat’s sturdy set. Our properties designer Rowan Doyle was producing props like a magician out of a hat; first you see nothing, then poof, there’s a clothesline. And all of this activity was underscored with sound cues being tested out by our sound designer M. Florian Staab. And what was I doing? Me? I was writing down every note I could think of, because if I didn’t share my notes with the team today, there would be no other time to share them and get the notes accomplished. I think I even doubled up on notes! Oops. Thankfully it was a generous room, and I’m looking forward to the next two days of tech.

What did I learn? Lead with what’s important. When I have two minutes to look at a cue and share my thoughts about what I’m seeing or hearing, there’s not a lot of time to tip toe around what my feedback will be. I can share what’s important to me right away. In fact my collaborators are depending on that alacrity! I also learned directness does not have to be devoid of kindness. We’re show people, but we are people after all.

This week has been a full rehearsal week. Directing Moon’s Kid Don’t Cry by Tennessee Williams. A short play that packs a wallop. Moony’s Kid is the story of Moony, a man who fell short of the American dream, but fights oppression with ambitious dreams of his own. Set in a mid-western town at the dawn of the Great Depression, Moony and his frustrated wife Jane struggle with the realities of their impoverished lives. It’s Tennessee’s first play to ever be published.

At the end of this week’s rehearsal, I’m feeling simultaneously exhausted and enlivened! Spending time with the text and characters has been like being in a natural spa; earthy, real, and revitalizing.

My actors are gems. Corey Allen playing Moony. Keona Welch playing Jane. It’s been a pleasure to be in the room with them. This week we’ve spent our time trying to tap in to the relationship of these characters and the capacity of the human spirit struggling to function in an oppressive environment.

On my way home from rehearsal last night I had a text exchange with a dear friend, and Drama League alum Michael Perlman.

MICHAEL: How’s it going??

CHRISTOPHER: I think it’s going okay. I show up. I laugh. I worry. I make choices, some smart, some not. Of course it could be going better…but that’s perfectionism/neuroses. I guess that means I’m directing.

MICHAEL: Absofreakinglutely.

What did I learn?: To focus on the people. This is my first Tennessee Williams. Stepping up to that mantle was a little nervous making. I chose the play because of its humanity and hope. The text is poetic. The people are real. When I serve the poetry, I lose the people. When I serve the people, the character and the relationship, the poetry lifts and sings.

This was Liz Lecompte’s final remark to the company before closing night of HAMLET at the Performing Garage. I was damn lucky to observe and assist The Wooster Group as they rehearsed the latest iteration of their iconic production seven years in the making, and throughout my time there, I did a healthy share of laughing, crying, and listening myself.

From their website:
“In The Wooster Group’s HAMLET, Shakespeare’s classic tragedy is re-imagined by remixing and repurposing Richard Burton’s 1964 Broadway production, directed by John Gielgud. The Burton production was recorded in live performance from 17 camera angles and edited into a film that was shown for only two days in 2,000 movie houses across the U.S. The idea of bringing a live theater experience to thousands of simultaneous viewers in different cities was trumpeted as a new form called “Theatrofilm,” made possible through “the miracle of Electronovision.” The Wooster Group attempts to reverse the process, reconstructing a hypothetical theater piece from the fragmentary evidence of the edited film. We channel the ghost of the legendary 1964 performance, descending into a kind of madness, intentionally replacing our own spirit with the spirit of another.”

The Wooster Group’s process of “Reverse Theatrofilm” requires 11 screens, inner ear monitors, three sound designers live mixing the show, two video operators, a rack of vintage Prada costumes, and a few of the most technically proficient actors alive. An edited video of the 1964 production serves as their text, and the cast attempts to exactly match its shifting tempo and jump cuts. If Liz wanted a scene faster, they would increase the playback speed from 1 (regular) to 1.13, 1.15, 1.5, or beyond. Theatre is an art of duration, and this production allows for an incredibly precise manipulation of time.

With such a technically complex performance, I was pleasantly surprised by their collaborative, jovial, and electrifying rehearsal process. Company members Kate Valk, Scott Shepard, and Ari Fliakos have been working with Liz for years, and their fiery rapport was both thrilling and disorienting. My first week, I felt as though I had stumbled into a stranger’s dysfunctional family Christmas party. Their virtuosic use of technology is grounded by a genuine love of the text and an old-fashioned work ethic. “Never complain, never explain!” Kate once declared. Another favorite moment:
Sound designer Bobby McElver: “Everybody stop fighting.”
Kate Valk: “I hate all this ‘Stop fighting.’ Sometimes fighting’s all we have.”

I absorbed every moment, positively beaming at the intelligence, wit, and crass of the company. What an honor to have Jennifer Tipton visit for three days to tweak the lighting, carving out the actors’ faces with the barest use of blue and warm sidelight. Best of all was sitting at Liz’s shoulder as she relentlessly improved her show. This summer, Richard Foreman told me that an artist’s job is not to make, but to change. If so, Liz is the most persistent artist I’ve ever met. I loved her no-nonsense yet cheerful approach:

“If you’re not talking about the work, keep it down.”
“That was the next level for you. And it’s great. But now I want to go to the next level.”
“It’s been bad, but this is the worst.”
“Let’s give it a try. Just for the hell of it.”
and most often… “Okay. Here we go. Same place again guys.”

I had so much fun, I forgot how close I was to theatre royalty. The legacy of The Wooster Group means so much to so many artists. In a liberal arts school steeped in Aristotelian theory, I cherished their example as a talisman of the radical and the vanguard.

Every day the company met to watch a daily video blog and vote on its title and tweet. Most videos were artfully edited footage from rehearsal or backstage, but once the editor surprised us with an archival clip from their 1978 production NAYATT SCHOOL. The silent video showed two figures inside a boxed-in set, with a woman wiping down a plexiglass window and a man sitting in an upstage corner. “Is that Spalding?” Liz asked. “You’re going to make me cry, and you don’t want to do that.” As the video played, a hallowed quiet took over the room. Subtitles flashed across the screen. Liz knew the words and spoke along with a crack in her voice: “because. if. there isn’t. then there’s. something. wrong.” I somehow felt history folding in on itself and saw the immensity and complexity of a life in the theater revealed.

Tirelessly hardworking, hilariously combative, and fiercely intelligent: I’ve worked with some stellar companies, but none like The Wooster Group. I left them feeling a little shell-shocked, but also emboldened to go forth and continue my own work. Directing ambitious, experimental material takes guts, but Liz taught me that the old school lessons still apply. This year I’ve worked on new plays, opera, devised dance, Chekhov, a rock musical, and HAMLET, but one thing stays true: I want to laugh, I want to cry, and I want to hear all the words.

Sometimes being an assistant director means standing in for one of the actors or reading text for a scene when an actor is not in the rehearsal room. On my Pippin assignment, I was asked to step in for an actor during the staging of a the song “With You”, a very choreographic moment of the show. A quick study of the text and lyrics of the song, and I’m on my feet with the dancers and acrobats participating in crafting the blocking of the song and scene. I have complete faith in director Diane Paulus, and I totally trust Chet and Gypsy, the choreographers… so I felt ultra safe in their hands as they were collaborating on what the staging could be. And of course I felt comfortable being onstage among the performers—those are my roots. Once I got over feeling like I’d jumped into a ring of fire, I could enjoy being in touch with that little actor in me. The experience was a beautiful reminder of the bigger picture of theatre making.

When I was a young actor, I was on my first professional musical theatre gig, 42nd Street at Stages St. Louis. The choreographer, Dana Lewis, has become someone I admire as an artist and person. Years later she confessed to me her thoughts of me that first day of dance rehearsal. She told me that on our first rehearsal break, after trying to teach a five minute tap dance in an hour and twenty minutes, she walked over to the director and said, “Okay, who’s the kid with the questions?! He’s driving me crazy!” She was asking about me. I was so full of curiosity, so full of questions. I thought I was trying to grasp the bigger picture. But I didn’t take into account that we had a big musical to stage, with fourteen production numbers. And those numbers needed to be staged in two and half weeks. My questions weren’t helpful to the process at that moment; I would have been more helpful by learning the steps and hoofing like my life depended on it! Knowing what I know now after having my own experiences of teaching an ensemble a five-minute dance in an hour and twenty minutes, I completely understand what Dana must have felt at that moment. What I had was ambition. What I lacked was perspective.

What did I learn? Standing in for the staging rehearsal was such a reminder that in theatre making, we move back and forth between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Or rather the forest and the trees. We all have our different roles to play in the rehearsal room. Literally. Figuratively. And we all depend on each other to do our best work as well as be in rhythm with the rehearsal process. Part of the expertise of the art is knowing when to focus on the bigger picture and knowing when focus on the details.

I can’t believe how quickly time has gone since I started this fellowship. I am now more than halfway through my second assistantship and in the midst of the design and pre-production work for my DirectorFest show. I am directing an INCREDIBLE new play by Dipika Guha called A Brief History of America. I am actually pretty proud of the description I wrote for the marketing materials so I will repeat it here:

Swept along by the storm of history a young girl charts a path through life, death, love and loss – A Brief History of America is both a radical and simple re-imagining of our collective past.

One of my favorite things about the play is that it explores and critiques our social, cultural and political world without ever explicitly talking about it. Instead it follows one woman’s life and it is through watching her that we feel the oppressive and powerful political tide and force of history. In fact, Dipika pulls off this amazing magic trick of making the social and political realms seem like elemental forces – as powerful and fickle and complicated and simple as the wind and rain.

Designing the play has been a real journey and one of the things I have started to realize is how helpful our work at the retreat in August has been to my ability to conceptualize and think about the world of this play.

In late August, we spent 5 days at an incredible retreat center in Massachusetts called Stump Sprouts. The center is situated amidst the Berkshires, far away enough to be able to see extremely large distances and high enough that the clouds sometimes float by below. It is an idyllic space with rolling hills, forests, fields, an incredible organic garden and a spattering of buildings which have all been allowed to keep the essence of their dairy farm origins despite major renovations.

There were no official theater spaces at the retreat center and so, for each scene and monologue that we worked on, one of the first and essential questions became, where? It was a profound question because it wasn’t just ‘how do we represent a location on stage’ but where (and what) should our literal stage be and then how do we want to alter that space, if at all. In the end, location became key to my point of view in both the monologue and scene I worked on.

The monologue was the Yorick speech from Hamlet. Obviously, it is meant to take place in a graveyard at an open grave. We didn’t have a graveyard so we began looking for somewhere outside where there was a hole in the ground or some kind of drop off. We found a steep drop off in the meadow behind the house that seemed perfect. We were thrilled. We began rehearsing with the actor on the lower plane, imagining the audience watching from above. But it didn’t feel right. What I suddenly realized was that I don’t believe that Hamlet would get in the grave. I think the specter of mortality so literally presented in the skull of his old friend terrifies him and as much as he is intellectually engaged in the questions of the meaning and importance of life and death throughout the play, in this moment, as he, for the first time, confronts the physical and material embodiment of death and decay he is repulsed and afraid. Given this, I asked the actor to step up and I got down in the ‘grave.’ Looking up at the terrified Hamlet trying to grapple with great questions of life and death while also fighting the urge to vomit or show his fear let me see a new side of Hamlet and one that I find incredibly exciting. We did it that way for the rest of the group and I’d like to think it really gave (at least some) people a new perspective on the piece.

For my scene I was assigned the amazing ‘Make me a willow cabin’ scene from Twelfth Night. At first my actors and I contemplated using a kind of loft space in the barn to give Olivia a perch from which to receive Viola, however, luckily, someone else was interested in the same space and so we decided to explore other options as well. Thank goodness we did! One of my actors suggested we try the back deck. It overlooked the mountains and the view was stunning. Olivia had even greater power here, commanding what felt like all of nature. Then, in playing with the deck chairs, we got the idea to play with a Nantucket, Jackie O, kind of feel and aesthetic. Olivia’s “veil” became Jackie O’s classic head scarf and her ladies in waiting lounged on wooden deck chairs beside her. It fit both the location and the scene perfectly and guided the rest of our choices. Of course, the best part of the location? The, “Olivia!” really did echo through the hills – amazing.

So, how does this relate to DirectorFest you ask? The action of A Brief History of America takes place in two locations: a creek bed by an old farmhouse and in that old farmhouse. And yet when the designer and I started to talk about what those places felt or looked like literally it was strangely unsatisfying – too small and limiting for the play. In addition, I was obsessed with the idea of the sensation of some kind of storm blowing us from scene to scene. I told my designer that, in an ideal world, we would black out, hear an almost tornado like sound, and bring lights up on an entirely different space. Luckily we didn’t have the money or resources of Broadway to start figuring out how to make this happen. Instead it led us to a more fundamental conversation about WHERE. The essential WHERE became rural America, a place that is beautiful and isolated and simple and powerful and has a kind of ancient, eternal feel. It was a place that felt immovable even as it was moved. This idea led my designer to conceptualize a great tree-like sculpture that would feel ancient and organic, but would rotate to reveal slightly different landscapes for each scene. I am thrilled with this idea. I am also thrilled that the set will capture some of the strangeness of the world, leaving the actors free to play the text naturally and not worry about adding some sort of forced style on top. We will see how it all evolves over the next few weeks, but I am so glad we got down to the roots of the where and that I was in the right headspace to do so from the retreat. More soon!