Human beings have been performing at least since our cave-dwelling ancestors enacted the hunt before the rest of the tribe. And yet, those who have studied theatre or film—especially those with an interest in directing—know how rare it is to get solid, time-tested, and craftsman-like guidance on what to watch out for, when to intervene, and how to avoid common mistakes.
Throughout my own schooling and apprenticeship as a young director, I was hungry for such fundamental principles and solid advice. Aristotle and Stanislavski had done their part, but who, I wondered, were the current standard-bearers? Who, if anyone, could give reliable counsel on actors’ tendencies and behaviors, common audience perceptions, or effective interventions to familiar rehearsal conundrums and performance crises? Who, in short, knew the rules?
Then I met Frank Hauser.
...
It was the late 1980s. I had just graduated from college, quit a job to which I was ill suited at a bank on Wall Street, and set off for London in search of a directing career.
There was Frank, one of my teachers, a scarecrow of a man with a scratchy voice, a quick wit, and a penchant for impish puns and gentle teasing. His rumpled garb and folksy manner belied his considerable achievements; during his nearly fifty-year career, he ran the professional theatre at Oxford University, directed numerous productions in London and New York, and taught or directed many who were or would later become royalty of the British stage, including Alec Guinness, Richard Burton, Judi Dench, and Ian McKellen.
Around the time I met him, Frank was at the coda of his career with three productions running simultaneously in the West End. After completing our class work in London, Frank invited me to Chichester, a festival theatre town in southern England where I apprenticed as his assistant director on a production of A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt.
One day before beginning rehearsal, a surprise. Frank handed me a collection of twelve neatly typewritten pages, the first of which modestly stated his subject: Notes on Directing.
“You might find these helpful,” he said.
The Notes were the great gift of his collected wisdom—gathered over his distinguished career and polished to a sharp edge. Distributed informally to friends and students, Frank’s Notes told how he spoke to actors, how he analyzed a scene, how he kept rehearsals buoyant and efficient... in short, how he went about bringing a story to life.
Frank’s directing technique in rehearsal wasn’t nearly as doctrinaire as his Notes might have indicated, but they did capture his pith and efficiency; his quick, almost surgical intervention; his concentrated, deceptively simple guidance to actors that is, like him, sometimes easy to underestimate.
As a director, Frank elaborates when he must, but with seeming reluctance. He stops a bit short, expecting you as the actor or student to fill in the gaps and take some responsibility as an active participant in the conversation. In other words, you have a role to play. The assertions are his, the rumination and implementation, yours. Only after some time does one catch on to how much he is accomplishing by doing and saying seemingly little—a sure sign of a skilled director and teacher at work.
Fifteen years after we met, I approached Frank with the idea to expand his twelve pages into a book.
All of his original Notes are still here. But they are supplemented with other techniques and teachings I observed Frank demonstrate in rehearsal, as well as with additional material based on my own experience and the teachings of others.
We have given the book the voice of an assertive instructor, one whose favorite words are “do this,” “don’t do that,” “always,” and “never.” Frank and I could have taken a milder, more suggestive approach, but better, we thought, to overshoot and provoke than to risk having all the impact of a marshmallow.
Certainly it’s appropriate to question the dogmatic assertions found here — to struggle with them, debate them, hate them even. Our hope, though, is that the reader will have nearly an impossible time ignoring them.
Russell Reich