Control

I suspect that most if not all directors have a bit of the control freak in them. I know I do. We get involved in theatre in one way or another — I started as an actor — and sooner or later we realize that we wouldn’t have to second-guess everything all the time if only we were in charge.

The wonderful irony of becoming a stage director to satisfy your control-freak urges is that, of course, at the end of the process you have no control at all.

Having a week off right before going into the last three rehearsals messed with my head. Once I took care of my sound design notes, there wasn’t a lot of work I could do on the show. So I thought and thought and thought about all the little things that we haven’t yet had time to work or fix. I planned out a whole sequence for last night that would allow us to fix everything and still do a full run. And of course, we weren’t really able to do any of it — getting the set up took too long, various pieces weren’t ready, etc etc etc.

It was frustrating, and I let my frustration show more than was really necessary. Sometimes, it’s important for a director to show some frustration — you need to let the whole cast and crew know that you care about the project, and that you expect everyone to bring their best game. But it’s also important to pick your battles; one of my teachers said that directors get one temper tantrum per project, and have to pick very carefully when to throw it so as to get the best results. That makes sense. I didn’t quite throw a tantrum last night, but I did get more upset than events really warranted. It wasn’t the right time to play the tantrum card — it was the control freak in me panicking over how little I could do to make things happen.

Ultimately, this is why theatre is a good profession for control freaks. At first, we get to make a bunch of big decisions; we collaborate with everyone, but we do have the final say. And then we have to let it go. On every show, we’re faced with our greatest fear. What could be more exciting than that?