Behind the Scenes: Senior Directs
On February 28, six seniors in Actors Ensemble, Enloe’s upperclassmen-exclusive theatre company, took part in what has now become a cherished EHS theatre tradition: Senior Directs. In this second and final installment in this year’s Senior Directs series, each senior presented a self-directed one-act play of their own choosing.
AE seniors Ricky Hall and Austin Richards, who presented their renditions of Catherine Filloux’s The Beauty Inside and Walter Wykes’s The Spotted Man respectively, provided The Eagle’s Eye with an inside look into the processes preceding their senior directorial debuts.
What was your senior direct about?
Ricky: The Beauty Inside tells the story of a young girl that lives in Turkey. Her name is Yalova, and she is a victim of an attempted honor killing, which is a relatively common issue in Turkey and the Middle East. The play tells the story of her mother, who is fighting for the tradition and against Yalova, along with a Westernized lawyer who comes in and tries to represent Yalova’s story. The play follows this power struggle between these three women, who are all trying to have their individual stories told. Yalova is seeking to be heard, understood, and advocated for.
Austin: The Spotted Man is an absurdist show that doesn’t really follow a typical structure. It’s kind of ridiculous in that sense. The entire one-act is written similarly to a sketch comedy piece because it follows the idea of a normal guy being placed within insane circumstances. It follows a character named Eugene, who believes in his head that he is covered with spots and infected with a terrible disease. Naturally, he goes to the doctor, and the play begins with him being brought into the examination room by this nurse. You can immediately tell that there is something kind of off with the nurse… You haven’t totally gotten it yet, but you can certainly tell that something is up. She leaves, saying the doctor will be in shortly, and Eugene is left waiting. Then the doctor comes in, but it’s the same exact actor playing a completely different character—and this happens a number of different times. It’s all a scheme to mess with Eugene’s mind. One recurring motif is that Eugene repeatedly asks for his wife to be brought into the examination room because he’s nervous, and he’s told that she’ll be brought in, but it keeps being pushed later and later. Eventually, towards the end of the play, the nurse/doctor character comes in dressed as Eugene’s wife. The entire show focuses on the mental manipulation of Eugene.
What about that play spoke to you? Why did you feel like this was a story worth sharing?
Ricky: What I love about this play is that it focuses on both female strength and female vulnerability. I’m attracted to stories that can serve as ways to give voices to the voiceless, and this show highlights that. It epitomizes what it means to be listened to, understood, and valued… and specifically what it means to not feel those ways. We definitely saw that with the three characters in the piece in the sense that they each had their own objectives, but they faced different obstacles for their stories to be told. It attracted me in that way.
Austin: I was personally interested in the show because it’s incredibly funny, and there are so many actors in AE that are naturally funny people, and I wanted to both bring that out and challenge them because the comedy in the show isn’t conventional—it’s very intellectual and requires great thought in order to be understood and delivered well. I wanted to involve two talented actors and stretch them to their best ability.
What was the most rewarding element of the process?
Ricky: One, as an actor who was given the director to direct, it’s rewarding in a way because directing is not easy. Directing is allowing your mind to be open to anything, to celebrate and honor mistakes. Directing is a collaboration; it’s not just one person calling the shots, though some directors may think that. It’s a collaboration with all of your actions—listening to each of their ideas, but also being trusted and responding honestly to them. More particular to my senior direct, though: My piece is very short in length—in terms of what was there, what was given. My text was only five pages long. But what we created included the shadow theatre at the beginning because I’m really fascinated by shadows in general and I believe they helped established by stylized vision of the show. Having that, along with the song at the end… having all of those included in the final project was really rewarding because they weren’t necessarily what we began with, but they’re what we ended up with.
Austin: As an actor, you don’t get to see other actors grow nearly as much as you do when you’re a director. When you’re directing, you’re not doing the same work as the actor; instead, you’re giving the actors the circumstances in which to grow and then encouraging that growth. Being in a director’s standpoint, it was really cool seeing my actors grow from the first day until the actual performance.
What was the most challenging element of the process?
Austin: Scheduling. Definitely. We only had a month—a little less than a month—to work on this. Considering how long the script was—fourteen pages long, I think… With multiple characters, that might be doable, but with only two characters for fourteen pages, it was definitely difficult for me to give that to them and for the actors to memorize so many lines in such a short period of time. Also, figuring out how to make creative choices. Usually, the script pretty much tells you where the actors are supposed to be. But really breaking from the script and trying to creatively make the script my own was definitely challenging.
If you could go back and change anything, would you? What would it be?
Ricky: Theatre in general is always subject to change because we, as human beings, are constantly evolving. So does art—specifically live theatre. There were choices that my actors made one particular day, and I wanted to emphasize to them: continue to play around with it, continue to have fun, continue to listen to one another. Because if you listen, you will, by default, always change your choices, tactics, and objectives. If I could change anything as a director, I would just emphasize that even more. I would really hone in on the idea that, as an actor, you should never reuse a tactic; each time, there should be a different choice that you make, which is the exciting thing about live theatre. I was taught this summer at Governor’s School that “rehearsal is rehearing,” so while you rehearse, you are constantly rehearing what your fellow actor has to say and then thinking about how you can both change that and make a choice based on that.
Austin: Honestly, the only thing I would change is certain props being available sooner and having a little more rehearsal time. Other than that, I think everything went exactly as I wanted it to, and I was even happy with some of the things that I didn’t expect to happen.
How did this experience shape your understanding of the directorial process?
Austin: Last year in Acting IV, I was lucky enough to direct another one-act play. That was a very different experience since I had several more actors, so it was a bit more chaotic. But I really grew from this experience because I was really able to understand the art of directing. My first time around, I had so many actors, and it was hard to actually get the meaning of directing out of the experience. This time, though, with only two actors, I was able to pay as much attention as possible to the minute details of one character. I was able to focus on how to be a successful director. Having this be my second go-round and already having an idea of how to run it structurally in addition to having only having two actors was awesome. As the director, you’re giving the actors a playing field in which to play in with their characters. Being able to only have two actors, I was able to really decide what kind of playing field I wanted for them, and I definitely feel like that benefited the actors.
