Play Directing, 7th Edition

8

Learning to See

The Games of Visual Perception

 

Our exploration pauses here to consider one of the most important aspects of stage direction and the capabilities of the director: How well do you see? Learning to see—learning to observe meticulously and perceptively—is a skill the young director must acquire early in order to help him make images that can excite and move audiences. It is not enough to give casual attention to what an actor wears, or the place he tells the story, or how he moves around the stage in relation to other actors. Instead, the director in training must learn to see so incisively that after a quick viewing of a few seconds, he can recall explicitly every object, every move, the quality of light in the specific place, ...