BNT: Directing

This semester I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to direct for Brand New Theater. It is a student run theater company that features all student-written work, is student acted, student directed, and student produced. The show, entitled Laugh or Die, was a series of one act plays or scenes performed in a single evening. I directed one of the one acts called, The Difficulties of Being a Half-Vampiric Couple. It's about a vampire and his human girlfriend in a therapy session; a comedy (Not like Twilight).

It is always interesting seeing your work as a director, because near the beginning of the production, you are integral, you know everything, and by the end all you can do is sit in the audience and hope that nothing goes wrong. Everything is out of your hands. That is the most terrifying and exhilarating part, in some ways it feels like a mama bird pushing her babies out of the nest and hoping that they can fly. 

It was also very helpful and enlightening to get feedback from friends, family, and professors. Although the Village Gate is a small, strangely configured theater (it used to be a retail space), it worked for our small one-act festival. It's very small, at the most we had 80 people in the building, so it's intimate and you can see the rest of the audience. It's fun to see people's reactions to your work. 

It's been fun working in the theater a lot again. Between classes and this show, I've been busy, busy, busy. But I wouldn't change that. I learned so much about talking to actors and communicating where I want the scene to go without stifling the creativity of others around me. Of course there are bumps, like having the writer at rehearsals... or technical mishaps during the run of the show (ah!), but without them I wouldn't learn. 

I haven't decided if I am going to try to direct again in the Spring Semester amid Ultimate Season and recovering from hernia surgery, but I am going to be more involved, in some way. It makes me happy!