ABSTRACT

Every director needs some first-hand experience of acting, and film directors can learn the basics most enjoyably by playing “improv” theatre games. Directing an improv may seem like a contradiction in terms, but the director is really the surrogate for an audience. The more advanced exercises need a director to select and coordinate cast ideas and take spot decisions, or the piece won’t start and stop in a timely way. The director’s major responsibility is to understand the characters’ development and changes in relation to the expectations of an improvisation or text. A director will do a reading or two from the written script, just enough to give the actors a sense of the dramatic dynamics and narrative goals of a scene. Then, before the actors memorize any dialogue, the director will rehearse the scene several times, allowing the actors to use their own words.