On Bold Choices within Theatre Directing and Staging

Have you ever come out of the theatre thinking ‘wow, that was phenomenal?’? I’d hope you have at least a couple of times in your life, if you are a regularly theatre goer at least. As audiences we store those moments up, committing them to memory. These phenomenal shows are likely to have been achieved through the holistic expertise of a team, rather than simply a certain person standing out alone. Sure, you can love a performance that had a shining star of an actor, one character who blew you away and left the others inconsequential in the background, but experiences like these are unlikely to be the ones that leave us in awe in the immediate aftermath of a show. A performance, whether it be play or musical, is supposed to transport you, if only for a couple of hours, to somewhere new. Theatre is about immersion, about connection, and this is often achieved through the mixture of acting, set, costume, lighting… the phenomenal is typically the result of bold directing.

As a theatre lover there have been many moments in my twenty-one years of life in which I have been blown away by performances. The pre-lockdown experience of Conor McPherson’s adaptation of Uncle Vanya at The Harold Pinter Theatre stands out to me personally, the memory of the set imprinted on my memory. Rather than the false wall of a set we were presented with the theatre wall, complete with luminescent fire escape signs. This striking choice by Rae Smith may not have been the first of its kind but it was no doubt used by plenty of productions following the filming of the play over covid. We found it echoed in The Oxford Playhouse this week as students took on the space, transforming it into another Chekhov play. The final act of The Cherry Orchard saw the destruction of the elaborate set, leaving the inner workings of the performance space on display. In fact, director Harry Brook took this one step further, his actors leaving the theatre completely via an access door after the final ensemble scene. It is a technique that only works if the depth of the stage is distinctly limited, however, rather than for example the stage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane which is famed for live twelve horse race during the 1909 run of The Whip. This in itself is a bold choice and certainly one that theatre history remembers, just like the times when water has fallen upon the boards (Singing in the Rain, Coriolanus (2013), The Crucible (2023) to name the most iconic).

While on the topic of stages, allow me to linger just for a moment on that biggest of pacing issues and a personal bugbear of mine – scene transitions. There are professional set changes, there are mechanical set changes and there are truly hideous fourth wall breaking set changes. Of the hundreds that I have seen, it is some of the most recent that stand out. A few short weeks ago I finally had the opportunity to watch Jack Thorne’s The Motive and The Cue. This play was without a doubt amazing, with every element feeling slick and impeccable, yet one of the truly remarkable things (the thing that I rave about to my theatre friends) was the set changing. As each scene bled into another, the screen would fall and the next scene would begin before it while the set behind was changed. Like the opening credits of an old movie, these moments gave you a taster of what was to come, the title of the chapter (as it were) being projected upon the screen between the actors and the rest of the stage behind. The second the stage hands were finished, the screen would lift, the actors would move back, and the scene would begin in earnest. It was ingenious and I sincerely hope it catches on.

Every generation attempts to do something bold with the performance space; Stanislavski, Artaud, Brecht, just many in a line of innovators. In an age of film and an age where we are able to push technology further than every before, we will start to see the full scope of what a director and their designers can envision for a space. Those already within the industry are an inspiration, a front line towards which students of the arts are moving towards. If there is something that I have learnt during my short time in student theatre it’s that the talent is clear to see. This week’s Oxford Playhouse play proved that, the show being one that was astounding in its bravery, its boldness. Of course the cast were an array of some of the most talented that Oxford Drama currently has to offer, but it is the bold final act of the play that stands out – due to staging, due to lighting, due to a director knowing the importance of being bold. This early on and on such a large scale, this could have been a leap that fell short, but instead it left audiences in awe that this was the vision of an undergraduate. May we all learn from this and remember how to be bold in our decision making.