Week 11: "Choreographing Movement as a Dynamic Tool in Directing"
The Coordinating the Blocking
Tools in Director-Actor Communication
It was emphasized that separate treatment of each tool would be necessary in order to see the values and strengths of each in director-actor communication. Although isolating them has perhaps made them seem more abstract than they in fact are, the better you learn to see in great detail everything that happens in a physical way on the stage, the easier it will be for you to see the simultaneous use of these tools. Yet, we know that the strengths of a scene’s moods depend greatly on the highly selective uses of these visual tools. A director who fully understands them will know how to exploit them.
Coordination
Coordination means using all the tools with as much variety and freshness as possible, a technique that can come about only if you constantly remind yourself of the many tools at your command. The most frequently neglected tool is movement; the dullest is usually the groundplan; the tritest is hand properties; the least utilized is composition. Not until you have all the tools working for you will you be of genuine help to actors in search of dramatic action and how best to illustrate it.
The director’s job is to make a scene work by “bringing out” the actors through appropriately illustrated reciprocation of dramatic action. Once you fully comprehend that dramatic action cannot be conveyed in ways that move us without convincing and believable visual illustrations employing all the tools, you can begin to consider yourself on the way to becoming a director. Play production is the articulation of an idea, not the invention of the idea itself—something the playwright has already done.
Use of the Tools on Other Stages
You must give the proscenium stage all your attention at this point if you are to learn in a progressive way, for all the tools are readily adapted to other stage forms—arena, open-thrust, forestage-proscenium. (These adaptations will be given special attention in Chapter 19.) For now, you must concentrate on how to help the actor on the proscenium stage through the use of the tools of communication. Don’t confuse the form of the stage with this central purpose. The strongest director is one who knows how to bring the actor to the highest level of achievement.
Paper Blocking
Again, some directors take a hands-off attitude toward blocking plays, saying that they leave most stage positions and movement up to the improvisation of their actors. Professional actors, through long experience, know how to show themselves to the best advantage on the stage—an awareness learning actors seldom have. Don’t let such statements mislead you; learning about how to direct is not entirely the same process as leading skilled performers in a professional production and even with the most skilled performers, large ensemble scenes require expert staging. Do your homework first and develop this essential skill. You can decide when and how to deploy it as each situation dictates.
Although a director in training should gradually move toward the goal of controlled improvisation with actors, paper blocking should be practiced as a necessary step in learning the values of all the tools of communication. Paper blocking is the homework preceding rehearsal periods. The learning director can improvise in the quiet of the study without all the confusion and speed of a rehearsal situation, where the director will likely be more self-conscious and less able to concentrate than the actors. Because the job is to help actors, the director must be, in one sense, a big jump ahead of them in knowing the playscript and what is to be done with it. The learning director’s blocking homework, then, is a playing of the scene in the imagination: experimenting with what various options in staging might look like visually. With time and privacy, the director can experiment with several ways of blocking a scene until arriving at what looks to be the best decision.
Paper blocking should not be an arbitrary director’s decision that will be forced on the actors, but a preexamination of possibilities for director-actor communication. Instead of arriving at rehearsal with only one way to illustrate a scene, a director should have investigated the possibilities widely enough to enable the work to move in several directions with the actors, although the director may personally expect that one possibility is likely to be superior to the others. Paper blocking, appropriately understood and handled, can open up a director’s imagination instead of closing it, for a dozen possibilities are better than one. Moreover, the job of rehearsal is to keep the actors working. If they must wait around while the director ponders how the staging of a scene should go, actors may well be tense and may not concentrate as well as they might if the director didn’t use valuable group time for what could be roughed out in homework. Imagination in rehearsing is often released at the appropriate speed and rhythm of a scene; too much slow-moving playing may dry up the actors’ imaginations.
The Promptbook
The promptbook is your original design for a live production of a play. After you have studied "The Director and Design", your knowledge will be much more inclusive, but at this point, the promptbook must be based on what you have learned in this course additionally, you can take the "The Director and Play" course for fundamental play analysis. Thus, it is a test of how well you have grasped the concepts of play analysis and the six blocking tools, as well as the techniques for making them work for you. Again, this procedure will open your imagination, not close it.
In order to provide sufficient space for all the necessary notations, make a working promptbook by placing each page of text so that it faces a blank page opposite it when the promptbook is laid open. In this way, you will have room on the facing page to make notes about blocking and points of interpretation. (Particular moves that you want to try out in rehearsal can be number keyed to corresponding numbers in the facing text page.) Keep your prompt book in a sturdy binder of a type that you feel comfortable with and enjoy using. As with any craftsman, a director’s tools—in this case, the promptbook, say much about you. Therefore, don’t be sloppy about making this primary tool that will undergo a great deal of use.
Groundplan Design and Testing
Because a groundplan for a Realistic staging is likely to be the floor plan of a setting with walls or at least partially so, the plan should show the lines of the enclosing walls, doors, windows, levels (platforms), and all furniture pieces. Always make an accurate drawing to scale. Freehand improvisation will only get you into trouble—you will not be accurate with the space relationships and will be misled by what you think you have instead of by what you actually will have. Figure 47 is a sample drawing, but you should follow the principles you have learned in your scenic design class.
You must take the greatest care with the groundplan, following explicitly the procedures discussed in Weeks 3 and 4, for all the other director-actor communication tools will either depend directly on it or be strongly influenced by it. Remember: A dozen groundplans, tested out in your study beforehand, are better than one in trying to find the best choice because your imagination and improvisational force will be released. Select the furniture pieces with unusual care in the interest of projecting how they can act as “activity areas” in stimulating actors to fresh illustration
Test your groundplan by answering the following questions:
1. Does it have a minimum of five to seven acting areas?
2. Does it have strong upstage and downstage movement possibilities as well as stage right and stage left possibilities?
3. Are strong diagonals possible?
4. Have you created tension in the placement of your furniture pieces?
5. Is it an obstacle course?
6. What is the potential for strong compositions and picturizations?
7. Is it ingenious in creating a suitable space for the play? Do you have a plan for how to use rehearsal furniture in a way to achieves your (ideal) groundplan and have you avoided the pitfall of allowing your imagination and ingenious creativity to be limited by rehearsal room conditions, such as stock pieces for the furniture, walls, and other features that your groundplan calls for?
8. Will it provoke actors to fresh and imaginative illustrations?
9. Have you avoided the no-room nowhere, anywhere pitfall?
Perspective Sketch
A perspective sketch of the groundplan is needed at this point to show more nearly what the groundplan looks like in the cube of stage space. Does your plan exploit levels as well as give ideas of proportion, balance, and so forth? A perspective sketch will tell you whether the room looks like a room and whether the stage areas have all been exploited. The mood of the setting—and it is now a setting with the walls added, except for color treatment and modifying details—will be created largely on the basis of the distribution of furniture pieces, the sense of space created, and the size of the setting.
Composition and Movement Notation
Now that you have the groundplan designed and the promptbook ready for use, you are in a position to record your compositions and movement suggestions in a detailed way. You will already have many ideas in mind from your work on the groundplan, but your intention now is to assess the groundplan in a specific way by seeing how well it will work continuously throughout the scene. If you have done a good job in design, you will find that this detailed procedure will move rapidly and excitingly. Do not labor over making everything work, for if you move too slowly with this sort of notation, you will lose the rhythm of the scene and what you intend to do with it; blocking is like a chess game that you always project five moves ahead. Remember that the blocking you “see” will now meet its crucial test only when you suggest it to the actors who will play the scene and that the intention of advance planning is to put yourself in as flexible a position as possible.
Now enter on the upper half of each blocking page all the movements for that page of text that faces it (see Figure 48). Number each movement on this page consecutively and then place the same numbers in the text. By setting down the movements, you will automatically imply the compositions and also, at least in your imagination, some projection of the picturizations. Having a copy of the groundplan on the bottom half of each of these facing pages is very helpful, especially in your learning years. Draw all the movements for each page on this copy groundplan, and indicate each character by a triangle with its initial inside ( ). Show the direction of each movement by arrows on the lines and by the same number of the movement you have used in the written directions and in the text. A different color for each character will aid in keeping them separate.
Although gestures aren’t so readily shown as the movements are, as ideas come to you, they can be noted on the blocking page as well. Similar notes can also be made for improvisation with set and hand properties.
Master Movement Plan
When all the detailed blocking has been done for each page of text, you should enter all movement on a single groundplan, this time by using enlarged dots to show the main compositional positions (see Figure 49) and colors to show movements. When you finish doing this procedure, the drawing will look like a scribbled mess. Yet, it can reveal very quickly your exploitation of the groundplan—whether the movement and thus the composition, has been concentrated in only one or two areas; whether the central planes have dominated, thus reducing the use of the depth available in the groundplan; whether the full groundplan has been utilized in all of its areas; and so on. This check is quick and reliable to see how well the groundplan has been thought through. Figure 49 is an example that shows a scene well staged to eploit all of the groundplan’s areas and possibilities.
List of Properties
You have already made decisions on set properties when you designed your groundplan. At this point, you should review them carefully to be certain that you have selected the most activity-exciting furniture pieces you can think of that apply specifically to the given circumstances you are trying to suggest. Strive for freshness and ingenuity; triteness and dullness are sure to death as far as director-actor communication with the groundplan is concerned.
Finally, select with the greatest care the hand properties you think might stimulate actors. Verisimilitude (the appearance of being true or real) to the given circumstances is again necessary, but remember that it is secondary and that the primary value of a hand property is to aid an actor in his use of gestures. If too few properties are used, a scene will very likely be under illustrated, but too many can distract an audience by throwing emphasis on the properties themselves. So you must give your attention to making an appropriate list, with the intention of adding other properties later as they are needed or withdrawing those that prove to be inadequate.
Tasks Assignment
1. Using your study play, prepare a promptbook incorporating the following:
a. Playscript and blocking pages
b. Groundplan to scale
c. Perspective sketch
d. Blocking notations for the entire play
e. Master movement plan
(Note: If these exercises have been done with a study play en route, all that needs
doing at this point is the master movement plan and putting everything together in the Promptbook.)
2. Discuss coordination in all of its aspects.
3. Discuss organic blocking as a primary procedure in working with actors in training.
Deadline: March 6, 2026
