Life is the farce which everyone has to perform. - Arthur Rimbaud

Last night I finally started to give a bit more thought to Red Herring. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. It's my first shot at being a director and I think I picked a good show to start with. Of course I'm currently stressing out over casting and finding the right people for roles and probably will be until the actual auditions on the 28th and 29th of this month.

I know there are several people in the community who can fill each other roles, but waiting for the end of the month to see if they show up for auditions is causing a bit of anxiety. There's quite a bit going on in the theater community in the next few months. I have to wait to see who will be doing a musical that will be running directly opposite my show before even truly thinking about who might come to auditions and who I might want to try to nag into coming to auditions.

However, last night a couple friends helped me sit and read through the script out loud as a favor, and it gave me fresh inspiration for the direction of the show. To actually hear the lines out loud was a much different, and much needed experience. I have a vision for each scene, and for each character in those scenes. As much as I love the freedom as an actor many of the directors in our community provide when doing blocking, I believe in giving more actual direction.

I don't want my cast to guess if they're doing it right or to my liking. A director's job is to give direction on characters and staging - how they speak, how they move.... not just entrances and exits. Having been in shows where my director has given so many blocking notes one can't focus on their performance and shows where I've received absolutely no blocking, I find to find the happy medium for my cast. So I'll make my notes with the thought in mind that things will probably have to be simplified and changed based on what can be done in reality. Sometimes something looks wonderful on paper, but not so much in life.