STAGE DIRECTIONS
I want to continue trying to address the confusion surrounding stage directions. As I have said, there are several reasons we might find them untrustworthy. 1. Where do they come from? Sometimes they are important messages from the writer. Sometimes they find their way into a script as a notation made by the script supervisor describing the choices made by the actors or their director. Such an instance should be given less weight than author’s directions. Still, even in the case of directions given by the writer there are problems. Writers sometimes include the directions because they don’t trust the reader’s ability to understand a script (interns doing coverage, agents, studio executives, even directors and actors). This sort of defensive directions usually involve giving the obvious cliche choice e.g. “They sit.” Must they sit? Maybe yes, maybe no. Sometimes writers actually write in how the character feels e.g. “angry”, or indicate behavior like “sighing”, or “brightly”. I try to take these out so they don’t clog the actors’ imagination. 2. And then there is the problem of where on the two-dimensional piece of paper the stage direction appears. The writer can’t - and shouldn’t try - to achieve any exactitude with a direction like “Miles raises his hand.” In this instance the director must understand that the writer is telling us something something that must happen, but not exactly when and how it should happen.
So some directions are best eliminated or ignored, and others must be addressed. The answer to the question “which are which” comes through understanding which are necessary for the action and also which are necessary to motivate an actor’s saying a line. Adam must raise his hand for Dr. Ross to (eventually) say “Yes?”. Sometimes a line is mysterious and the answer may be found in the stage direction. Why at the end of a scene does Jack say to Miles, “ Do you read me?” and then “I’m warning you?” with nothing uttered in between? Immediately before the line “I’m warning you?” the stage direction indicates that Miles signals a waitress. Why does he do that? We don’t know…but what we do know is that he has not stated his agreement to Jack’s plan. By signaling the waitress he is showing that he is ignoring Jack. That’s why Jack says “I’m warning you.” How do we figure that out? By trial and error in rehearsal. We do the thing and then try to figure it out.
MEMORIZING LINES
Finally a word about lines in rehearsal. There is no necessity for an actor to work from memory in rehearsal. Actors work off the text all the time. They should be getting increasingly familiar and comfortable with their lines, but rehearsal are not a test of memorization. They are a process of exploring and excavating the action of a scene.