Directing has been something that I thought I wouldn't be able to do. It's akin to watching an Olympic gymnast and telling yourself that it's impossible you'll be that person on TV. Being a very technical person, someone who thinks in terms of cues, markings and timing, artistic direction has alluded my sphere of experience. Yet this opportunity has sparked something that had been dormant.
I used to write fiction - letting my mind wander to alternate realities. Almost all the stories I write are based in reality, because stories are just more convincing when you can imagine them to be real. This experience escaped me after 21 Dec 2008, when I brutally learnt that reality can be more painful and more fantastical than fiction. When you really can only write about pain when you have felt it. Ever since, my senses deaden because it is simply easier not to feel especially when all you feel is just pain. I shut the doors of my imagination.
Directing has most leisurely drawn that side back. Well firstly, Shiv said something that I've been grappling to put words to: Directors act the most. We act in front of our actors. Taking criticisms and molding into alluring encouragements that will prod the actors to perform in a certain way. I find myself crafting "pathways", creating illusions of choice to seduce my cast into coming to their own conclusions when it's really my own. It is seditious, scheming. Being this director, I transform into a mastermind of story-tellers. We have to tell a story to our cast, and through them, to reach out to our audience. It's slightly insidious and no wonder "the Scottish play" is not spoken during performance night. With so much yarns of lies, tales and Machiavellian plots running afoot - the web is ready to spring upon the audience and actors to create the intended atmosphere.
"Politicians lie to hide the truth, artists tell lies to reveal it"
- V from V for Vendetta
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