Emergency: Your attention and opinions are Needed!

This is coming from observations by Ms. Vander Schaaff: We will cover this subject in class tomorrow, but I also want everyone to weigh in on this. This happens every year at some point -- you are all beginning directors and also working with younger actors.
I am italicizing this because it is of the utmost importance.

I am noticing that some of the staging is flat. We have a lot of young
actors who do not yet have the instinct to create dynamic stage pictures.
The directors will have to work extra hard to avoid a few pitfalls:
1. All actors standing in a line
2. All actors walking on stage b/c they were told "to walk on stage"
instead of b/c their characters need something or need to go somewhere
3. Actors closing the distance with another actor-working as if they
are in film instead of in theatre where distance is key
4. Upstaging themselves or others
5. Playing the scene in the back of theatre instead of the playing
space downstage
So, how do you avoid these things? How do you tweak a scene, or teach an
actor to find and create stage pictures? And, how do you make entrances and
exits dynamic? A lot of entrances are coming from the same places right now,
and are flat instead of on an angle.

Houston's Two Cents: You may have to hand feed motivations and stories to your actors at this point. The rehearsal period is short. You may need to give them a reason for entering, you may need to give them a place they are coming from and a destination for where they are headed. You can ask them what their character thinks of a main character who is speaking. Tell them to listen to the action as if they are hearing it for the first time. Ask them how they would react to things going on. Some of my favorite moments of all the plays at Pennington are the background people making their own story line - so ask your actors to do that - to make their own story - this would be especially important in Lauren's piece, and if Evan ever gets more people for his plane, and if there are any people in Ian's bar. Think of the viewpoints (I'm not joking). Think of the Viewpoint (those of you who had Adv. Drama) called "Topography". You will need to make a visual map in your head of where people are entering and exiting and how they are moving and using the space. Here is a hint that is Basic Drama material -- any intimate (between 2 important characters) scenes really need to take place downstage near the audience. I know that Mr. Harding and I have encouraged you to use all the space/depth of the stage, but you have to be choosy about which conversations take place where. It is theatre, so you can sometimes ignore actual architecture. Like in Evan's show, certain conversations from the back of the plane could perhaps be off to the side, more downstage, isolated in light. As long as you make things like this a convention to your audience, they will believe it is real. Some of this will come with costume and lighting, but you need to manage the movement and blocking onstage. Now that Alia is here to be on book, or work with actors one on one with their lines, you should attend to the entire visual picture and mapping of how people are moving. We'll work on this in class. I'm assuming that Marly's show might fall out of this category, but I'm sure she has some insight into this subject. Mike is the master of this, so his opinion will be quite valid. Andrew Hanks, we can talk about his on Friday during 7th. 6th period, we will attend to this tomorrow (thurs.)

I want each of you to identify one scene that is falling flat in the way Ms. V. describes. We will work on strategies for each of those scenes.