HONEST ABE

I swear I'm at work on Director Vs. Playwright Part 4, but in the meantime, here's Isaac's guest-blogger Abe Goldfarb on the director's role. One excerpt:

The thing should be blocked in one or two nights, if possible. It should all be worked out beforehand. I hate nothing more than the idea of spending days and days "exploring" the blocking of a scene, doing little exercises to draw the meaning out as one would extract a delicious poison from a ripe, candied snakebite. The shape and purpose of every scene must be clear at the outset. We're not having a class, we're creating a show. I need to know how it all plays before I walk into the room.

Now, I've seen just about every kind of directorial process lead to good shows, but I like how Abe is clear on exactly what kind of process he likes. In my previous post on directors, I referred to their (in many cases) aggressive, forceful nature. That's not a complaint. Directors have a lot of variables to manage, and the only way they're going to get through it all is to have a clear idea of what they want and the force of personality to pursue it. The quality I dread most in a director is vagueness.

(Is "vagueness" the noun? "Vaguery?")

--SlowLearner

UPDATE: Dan has a really good response.