STAGE DIRECTING
In the beginning of summer, in Łeba we were working on stage direction “on the spot” for the first time. I was very interested in how Ewa Ignaczak will lead the group and how we will be working together. Since the very beginning of the project, I felt that Ewa is a big authority to me and that I would like to work with her and for her to lead me in the process of creating a performance, either as an actress or as a director. Fortunately, this year I was assigned to her team and I was very satisfied, because I thought my competences in directing will improve because of this experience.
So, in Łeba we had the second meeting where we discussed our future performance and this time the work was very concrete, tough and very inspiring. We had to be prepared for the meeting, come with some ideas about the play (there are three of us directing, each of us has their own part of the play to direct), about the meaning, the characters and about how we would manage time and space of the piece.
The preparation work itself was very interesting, because we had some very precious information from Ewa herself in the previous meeting and from the psychology teacher (Daniel Żyżniewski) who gave us a key to interpreting the work as well as very interesting material to understand Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and his personality. We dove into analysis in the period before the meeting and during the meeting itself, the work, as Ewa likes to say, “the work of a director is like a detective’s work”. We finally understood what it means.
The work during the meeting was quite hard for me, several hour per day discussing and exchanging ideas and points of view. It was surprising, the fact that we easily found a common decision on many aspects, despite the fact that there were many of us and that at first we came with quite different ideas, even though in some ways connected. My impression is that the fluency of the work was due to Ewa’s ability to direct the meeting and give us inputs, rules and guidelines to go on with the work.
During this meeting I was once more convinced of the fact, that there are no bad ideas, and sometimes even the strangest ideas are also the most inspiring.
One of the members of the group proposed an idea for the stage space, and the setting of the play; at first the idea seemed to me absurd and not connected with the play. Ewa immediately found the idea very attractive and inspiring and as a matter of fact after two days of discussions and exchanging points of view we all agreed that the idea was the most creative and gave us a real freedom in creating, imagining and connecting all the meanings we gave to the text and the story. I saw how important is to have a non-traditional thought, a free and creative thought which will leave the creator free to imagine, find new solutions, discover something personal and original.
This is more or less my aim for the further creative work in BAIT as well as outside the project: I will try to look deeper into analysis and at the same time to find a kind of general view of the work, which will allow me to find connections between factors, meanings, ideas. A stage director must have a particular attention to the details as well as to the general, general and particular at the same time. During the last year of studying stage direction I realized, that I lack some skills in analyzing a text and getting really deep into it, so that the directing work would be fruitful on the stage. I used to go to rehearsal with still many doubts and some obscure points left.
I have really great expectation for the directing work in BAIT. I would like to finally achieve a method, a system. At the university I somehow found it difficult to get it, because it was sometimes difficult to ask. Teachers thought we had to already have a basic knowledge of what and how to do what we wanted to do, which we actually didn’t know and very often I felt alone. With Ewa and the group I felt free to ask, express my doubts and eventually to be naive and not know some basics. I assume this is a big progress for me.
Alessanda Cali
PARTNERS
