ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with essentials for directing actors. Procedures for rehearsal follow in Chapter 23, “Actor and Director Prepare a Scene”; Chapter 24, “Initial Meetings with the Cast”; and Chapter 25, “Rehearsals and Planning Coverage.” A further resource is Judith Weston’s Directing Actors (Michael Wiese Productions, 1999), which is usefully prescriptive and never loses sight of the actor’s perspective. Theater oriented and concise is Lenore DeKoven’s Changing Direction: A Practical Approach to Directing Actors in Film and Theatre (Focal Press, 2006). Acting is better understood in the theater, and better respected, so everything you learn there applies also to film. Film people are apt to look for immediate results, whereas theater people know that truthful results come only from the right kind of processes, which nearly always take time and work.
