Director’s Journal: Blocking

There was one aspect of directing my play that filled me with dread: blocking. It’s also the aspect that filled me most with excitement.

Blocking

“Blocking” is what you do in the second rehearsal–the first few rehearsals in a longer play. You work through the script, line by line, and teach the actors where they need to be at every moment.

I think it’s one of the two defining tasks of directing. This is where the director sees his or her imagined vision for the play coming into life.

You also might find that some parts of your vision make absolutely no sense in the world of space and time.

I remember a play in high school, one of my few leading roles, where I played a lawyer in a courtroom drama.

We had a huge stage. The huge witness stand was in the center, separate from the everything else.

While I interrogated the accused murderer, our director had me walking in circles around the stand.

Around.

And around.

And around.

And around again.

To make the circuit while I spoke the lines I had to speak slowly and walk fast.

I felt like an absolute idiot.

As I thought about directing my Christmas Play I knew that I didn’t want to make any of my actors feel foolish.

What I imagined and wrote as stage directions made perfect sense inside my head. Would it actually work with real people?

Adapting to the Space

One of the complicating factors was that this play would not be produced on a regular stage. It’s designed to be produced in the church.

A stage is a sort of blank slate. A chancel is a complicated geography problem.

I imagined a generic sanctuary: a chancel area with room enough along the back for a row of six chairs and a pulpit. Enough space in front of the chairs for three zones of action, right left and center.

The church I attend has a really unusual sanctuary. The chancel has two levels. The pulpit, and three chairs for worship leaders are a good two feet above the floor of the sanctuary. It is not quite wide enough to hold six chairs and a pulpit.

In front of that is a lower area, elevated by one step, for the Lord’s table and the baptismal font. It is not high enough for little actors to be seen when shepherds and magi and angels join the fun.

So I had to do what I suppose most directors will have to do when directing my play, or any play in a church. I had to adapt the action around the space that existed.

My aim was to make the sure the most important action was central and visible.

• I moved the narrator to the organ loft up behind the chancel.
• Bethlehem moved from the lower level up to stage right on the upper level of the chancel.
• Nazareth moved to the very center of the highest level of the chancel.

The only thing remaining as in my stage directions was a chair downstage left.

It works. It requires more moving up and down stairs than I’d hoped. And we are going to have to be very careful that the angel Gabriel doesn’t trip over the manger.

Solving Puzzles in the Action

And blocking revealed some spots where it is challenging to make the action happen within the time allotted by the speeches.

• Nobody wants a long silence while Mary and Joseph pantomime before the Innkeeper.
• Who can wait while they travel all the way from Bethlehem to Egypt?

Practicing component parts of scenes separately helped a lot.

• We practiced walking to Bethlehem and the silent conversation with the innkeeper without saying any lines.
• Then we practiced the lines.
• Then we figured out how to match up lines with action.

When it was time for the Flight to Egypt, we took half a page of script and walked through it several different ways to see what worked. We needed to time it so Joseph could say his line while he was still visible. We also needed him to get to Egypt before having to return to Nazareth.

But what really made it work  was the great goodwill of the actors. They were very flexible and willing to experiment, joining in the creation process. That what makes it play.

We got it all worked out. At least well enough to try again next week.

——

I was totally excited to find that for a while today my play was an official #1 bestseller in its category! (And it is still only 99 cents for the Kindle edition for launch week. You can get it by clicking here.)

(By the way, there are affiliate links in this post.)

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