Ten survival tips for directors by John Caird

by John Caird

1. Read. However literate you think you are, keep reading. Read plays and novels and adaptations and screenplays. Read social histories and biographies and diaries. Read all around the plays that most interest you. Prepare yourself as best you can for the searching questions your actors will fire at you on the rehearsal floor.

2. Go to the theatre. All sorts of theatre. Whatever you can afford. And don't be too discriminating. See everything – the National, the RSC, the Royal Court, your local rep, the school play. The latest blockbuster musical may be beyond your purse, but if you can blag a ticket, go and see what the fuss is about. And don't ignore the fringe. You might learn more by watching a rough theatre production in the upper room of a pub than anywhere else.

3. Travel. The world is your oyster – and there is theatre all over the world. Broaden your view about what constitutes good theatre by seeing it in its myriad traditions and cultures. If you speak another language, don't let it slide. Practise it, study its theatre literature, translate from it. Make it a special corner of your expertise.

4. Meet playwrights. Directors don't have anything like the authority you might imagine. Playwrights are the primary creative force in theatre. Get to know them. Read their plays. Help them develop their work. Set up readings with actors. The more playwrights you know and who trust you, the more likely it is you will be asked to direct one of their plays.

5. Meet actors. Directors should love actors. If they don't look forward to the time they spend with their actors and genuinely appreciate the actor's process, they will never be good directors. Actors are remarkable creatures: what they do, night by night, performance by performance, is extraordinary. Get close to it. Strive to understand the creative chemistry of the actor becoming the character. It's at the very heart of the business.

6. Form a company. However small, however poor. The idea of a company is at the heart of all theatre practice; little groups of like-minded artists ganging together to create plays. Raise some cash and put the plays on. Learn from your successes or failures and move on to the next project.

7. Work as an assistant. Write to all the directors you know or whose work you admire. Explain why you think the two of you would be a good match. Have something to show on your CV to prove your point. If you get taken on, be attentive and loyal and company-minded. Learn everything you can about your principle's method but don't get addicted to assisting. There's a limit to the usefulness of watching from the sidelines.

8. Work in the theatre. Any job will do. Directors should understand how every other department in the theatre works. Get a job in the wardrobe department or with the stage crew, or in the lighting or sound departments; or as a dramaturg, a box-office clerk, usher or dresser. The more you know, the better you will be at the directing game.

9. Observe the world. Whether you work inside the theatre or out, don't get trapped by its artifice. Wherever you live, wherever you work, you will meet the original versions of the characters you see in plays. Learn to observe people closely and analyse them accurately – their psychologies, predicaments and family lives; their fears, failings and aspirations. If you want your productions to be true reflections of real life, you must know your subject matter in the greatest possible detail.

10. Read my book.

VS.

Anyway, enough preamble: here are my ten pieces of advice, by Chris Hislop.

#1: You are an artist.

If you approach directing like any other artist approaches their job, you’re on the right track, creatively as well as professionally. Professionally, you have to accept that this will only earn you big bucks and be in a successful career once you’ve made your big break. See yourself more as the artist, working in his loft, or the composer, writing scores after a long day at the office. Get a part-time job. Find other methods of earning, because this won’t be a money-maker anytime soon. Creatively, use your artistic license to be experimental. Try out all of the weird and wacky things you think of, give yourself the ability to try things out, so that, if it does become a career, you know what works and doesn’t.

#2: You will make mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes, and you aren’t the exception. Nothing will ever go exactly to plan, play out correctly, or work well on stage. Don’t despair though: it’s important to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them. Every time something goes wrong, make a note. Write it down. Make sure it doesn’t happen again, and take those experiences on to the next project.

#3: Get yourself some training.

No one is born brilliant. You need to train to become a director, however works best for you. Drama school is a viable option, as are some practical University courses. If you’re like me and don’t deal well with direct teaching, dive straight in and start. Take advice from older actors and directors. You need to learn how to do what you do somehow: find what works best for you and get started.

#4: Find yourself a scene.

Directors don’t work in isolation: you need actors, producers, stage managers, as well as an audience. There is bound to be a theatre scene somewhere around you: a local drama group, a Fringe Festival, a general Fringe theatre set-up, a University Drama Society, and so on. Whatever scene it is, join in! Add your own spice to what’s already present, and make yourself some friends and contacts: these are the guys who will help you do what you want to do, for the time being.

#5: Be freelance.

There seems to be this myth that forming your own company is the right thing to do: this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you’re a free agent, able to put on your own shows with some money you’ve saved and the like, and work freelance with other directors at the same time, you’ll become more open to fresh ideas (that aren’t necessarily your own), and will avoid that awful clique mentality that seems to pervade the British theatre culture. Just be a free agent: be available to all, as well as self-motivated enough to work for yourself. If you surround yourself with a self-congratulatory group of friends, you’ll be so stuck in your little world that you won’t notice how boring your work has become. Avoid it outright.

#6: Learn to hob-nob effectively.

You will need to find people you can work with, and you will need to learn how to make sure you meet the important friends and colleagues of those in your scene. You will need to be self-confident, friendly and approachable, otherwise opportunities simply won’t come your way. Read some books on basic NLP and body language, learn to behave in a manner the other person would want you to: these are very potent weapons in your arsenal. Just don’t use them all the time, otherwise you will lose any credibility you may have built up for yourself.

#7: Do what you want to do.

Simply put, don’t take on jobs that aren’t your passion, just because they’re connected to the theatre world. Again, a lot of young people make this mistake, and it’s a killer. We all like to think that doing PR for this company means they’ll know who you are, and doing some stage-managing for this theatre will get your foot in the door, but it simply doesn’t work. People will admire and respect you much more if you just do what interests you, whereas if you’ll take on any job for them, they’ll just see you as desperate. Show some cojones, stand your ground, and do what you want to do.

#8: Go to a Festival.

Yes, they’re expensive, and yes, you won’t make any money, and yes, it’ll be trying, tough and possibly ruinous, but these are the best places to make contacts you’ll desperately need. Save up with part of your scene, spend the four-five grand you’ll need to get there and put on a good show, and hope it works for you. The goal here isn’t to make money: banish that from your minds. This is about marketing yourselves, pure and simple. Invite everyone you know, invite everyone they know, go to all of the parties while there, hob-nob to everyone you can meet, and see what comes of it. If you’re unlucky, you’ll walk away with a list of emails and phone numbers, infinitely useful in expanding your field of work. If you’re lucky, you’ll walk away with the one contact that will make your career. Edinburgh’s obviously the best example here, and should be the first place you consider going.

#9: Become a people person.

If you aren’t naturally (I certainly am not), then you’ll need to find a way to deal with people. Directing is all about dealing with people, from the hob-nobbing above to working with actors, producers, etc. You need to know how to get what you want from people. There are a million different ways to do that, and they will influence how you direct people, but you need to start experimenting and finding the approach that works for you. There is so much to say here, and I’ll probably dedicate an article to it later; the main point is that you need to learn how you deal with people, and get brilliant at whatever method works best for you.

#10: Give yourself a time frame.

Like most artistic endeavours, some of the best directors will never get the respect they deserve. Their work won’t get seen, or the one piece that guy from the National sees was rubbish, or their stage manager let them down, or whatever: be prepared for failure. Very few people make it as directors. It’s particular hard, as it’s a live art form: an artist’s work can be find in lofts after they die, a director’s pieces can’t. Accept that it might not work for you, and plan it out practically: don’t spend the rest of your life in a part-time job. Set yourself a time frame in which to really go for it, to reach for the stars, and a point at which to resign it to the hobby drawer.