Turtlenecks and a bad attitude: student drama as director training

Introduction

In the media, student drama directors, and directors in general are often presented wearing black turtleneck sweaters and having a pretentious attitude.¹ Director characters are rarely sympathetic, and the productions they direct serve as a McGuffin to emotional relationships or other plot points; one example is Lexi’s play from Euphoria (2022).² This portrayal (whilst representative of some) does a disservice to the hard work of student directors and dismisses the benefits of working on student drama. Whilst formalised director training, henceforth referred to as masters directing, might ultimately provide more networking opportunities and a sense of self-confidence in one’s abilities that can help with employment, student drama, meaning extracurricular shows worked on in higher education settings, provides a more immediate and practical introduction to the professional world than drama schools and allows emerging directors to develop entrepreneurial skills alongside their practice.

For this essay, I will use my own experience as an assistant director as a case study. I assisted on Re-Rovered in November of 2021 for ThreeBugs Theatre Company at the University of Birmingham (Collier, 2021). It was a piece of new writing that adapted Aphra Behn’s The Rover for a contemporary audience. To offer some comparison, I compare my work on Re-Rovered to the expectations set out within the course syllabus for MA Theatre Directing at the University of East London (UEL).³ I also draw on the opinions and experiences of Vivi Bayliss, director, choreographer, and graduate of the University of Birmingham.

UEL’s online course description boasts that the director will receive practical and theoretical experience in working as the sole director on a production, enabling them to find their ‘voice’. Their students will work on a ‘broad range of approaches to performance-making from traditional text-based work to intercultural and digital performance and contemporary devising’. These characteristics are in fact already shared with student drama: at Birmingham, the nine student drama societies produced a great volume of work across a range of styles, and Bayliss confirms that student drama was a place where you could ‘explore a huge range of styles and material’ (Vivi Bayliss, email to author, October 11, 2022). Depending on which society you worked with, as a director it was thus possible to experience different types of theatre and the challenges that directing such work presents. Re-Rovered was a naturalistic yet movement-oriented performance, but in the same season, student groups produced musicals, verbatim plays, and live art experiences. Whilst both pathways of director training provide a range of genres to try, due to the bi-termly turnaround of student productions, student directors are able to experience more theatre, and more quickly, than Masters directors. This enables the promotion of quite swift stylistic exploration, which means student directors have the chance to expedite the discovery of their own voice.

Because of an emphasis on process and collaboration, student drama can also ensure directors gain experience in other areas of responsibility or creativity, broadening their knowledge and equipping them to enter the theatre industry as knowledgeable freelancers. At Birmingham, production teams (which, there, include directors) go through a proposal process, where they detail to the organisation’s committee the show they want to put on, the financial repercussions, the marketing schedule, and how the team will work in a rehearsal room. It is practical experience that, helps young directors approach funding bodies; later, I used my experience contributing to the Re-Rovered proposal pack to shape successful funding applications for a show I directed with a theatre company I co-founded, The Girls Guide to Good Sex (Kickback).⁴ In comparison, UEL’s Masters course appears to lack this formalised understanding of the administration required to mount a production due to their mandatory nature: each production must take place for the training to be complete, so all the requirements are necessarily at the disposal of the director. In student drama, the onus to be theatrical entrepreneurs is thus placed more heavily, and usefully, on directors.

Lyn Gardner advocates for this approach of collaborative working in student drama, stating that ‘[i]f theatremakers understood more about others’ contributions, it could create a greater culture of appreciation’ (Gardner 2022). In part, this happens because student drama directors are forced to become knowledgeable in a wide range of technical disciplines, enhancing their personal skill sets as well as creating a mutually supportive working culture. In Birmingham’s student drama scene, technical equipment and performance spaces must be hired, yet often do not straightforwardly fit requirements or even work properly. In Re-Rovered, our sound system broke, so to ensure our SMs had time to fix it, I stepped in to manage the LED strip lights, ensuring the cast knew the safety measures for working around them. So, student directors must think laterally to adapt their vision to the space and understand how to get hands-on when needed. In contrast, UEL’s course prides itself on state-of-the-art equipment, yet there seems to be no instruction in it for directors. And since the shows must happen, ultimately there can be no technical barriers to them. This seems misleading to the Masters directors, who could step into the industry unprepared to work creatively with, especially, small-budget technical specifications.

Still, one point that places both pathways on equal footing is the director driving a production through unforeseen circumstances, such as interpersonal difficulties, difficult scheduling, financial and logistic pressures, or failures, and many more unfavourable situations. Student drama in particular presents the challenge of working with student actors, of course, all of whom have other commitments to work around. Admittedly, Masters directors will deal with student actors too but, for many, these actors will also be training as professionals. Bayliss thus notes that ‘there were plenty of people in student drama planning to pursue the arts professionally, but there were others who wanted to participate as a hobby, which was also completely valid. Remembering that even professional artists have other life priorities (for instance, childcare, family illness, etc.) is important and this sense of perspective began in a student context’. Whilst this should also be the case in professional productions, professional actors are often contracted to one job at a time; considering assignments and contact teaching hours, the amount of headspace a student actor has on a daily basis is far less than an employed professional actor, so even undertaking a student production is fundamentally demanding. Yet again, whilst navigating group working and scheduling may impact both student and Masters directors, the financial pressures are eased for Masters directors as there are no real repercussions for their show. Student drama directors must consider the money available from the society, as well as ensure their production makes a profit. If too many productions do not make a profit, the society will be unable to afford to fund any further work. On a financial level, student directors thus have to be savvy; a skill that might just set them apart from Masters directors, particularly in the Fringe theatre circuit.

There are, of course, some elements of a Masters course that are specifically advantageous because of its context. The programme offers real-time feedback from experts on emerging work and more professional networking opportunities. These opportunities enable the young director to adapt their practice during training and to open up their awareness to what a more experienced eye looks for in the rehearsal room and during a performance. Whilst this could be found through trial and error in student drama, the process is clearly more direct on a Masters course. And the most critical thing gained from institutional training is confidence in, and validation of, ability. The piece of paper that a graduate receives at the end of a Masters should provide directors with the confidence they needed to step into freelancing. My own reality is that I left my Bachelors degree with only a terms worth of directing practice, rather than a year. I know my abilities meet most of what is required professionally, but my confidence in myself is not bolstered as much as it could be. For many freelancers, imposter syndrome is harsh, especially amidst damning reports about the salaries of directors; not having the internalised ‘edge’ that a Masters gives you makes these figures even more worrying.⁵

So, there is something to be said about institutional director training. Because most of these programmes are Masters programmes, drama schools and universities alike ditch the cookie-cutter method of training and allow promising directors to begin to find their own voices within an environment of learning. But I have argued that student drama does exactly the same thing. These productions also offer the ultimate form of entrepreneurship within theatre: making tight connections across the production team and working with minimal budgets whilst continuing to turn out hopefully ground-breaking pieces of theatre. For Bayliss and me, it has offered a platform to solidify our directorial voices, to network and to meet collaborators, and produce work that shapes our careers. Directors, with a little bit of hard work, your hard-won skills can take you anywhere. Do not let the turtleneck's reputation become a millstone.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emma Large

Emma Large is an emerging theatre director. She has worked with the RSC, Birmingham REP, Immersive Everywhere and Aylesbury Opera Company. She graduated with First Class honours from the University of Birmingham in Drama and English, specialising in Directing, Immersive Theatre and Site-Specific Performance.

Notes

1 The pretentious attitude of student directors can be clearly seen in Eraserhead’s throwaway comment of “No! No! No! I can’t work like this! I'll be at my cubby” in ‘Shame’, in the series Malcolm In The Middle. Elsewhere in the media, the turtleneck is used to signify the pretentious nature of the director, e.g, in the character Stede Bonet’s costume in ‘The Art of Fuckery’, in the series Our Flag Means Death, when Bonet wears a 1700s-style black turtleneck; this effort to include the turtleneck even in a period drama demonstrates its pervasive image and associations.

2 Within the episode, Lexi writes, directs, and acts in a play titled ‘Our Life’. The piece places real-life events onstage, using actors that are the spitting image of her friends. It is the catalyst event to a physical fight between Cassie and Maddy as they recognise themselves on stage, thus serving as the vehicle through which their character development is expressed. As a director, Lexi is presented as somewhat controlling, as the throw-away lines from the stage crew illustrate, often threatening other crew members to achieve perfection in their work.

3 This was the first Masters course to appear via a Google search and has been chosen without bias by myself. It also had the most comprehensive course breakdown.

4 Kickback was successfully awarded Fuel Funding development funds by We Don’t Settle, a Midlands-based arts organisation that ‘revolves around giving young people the platforms to tell their stories. This may be through events and creative commissions, providing spaces for skills development, and supporting their social action projects by funding their ideas’. Girls Guide was also awarded funding from the Sir Barry Jackson Trust.

5 I understand that Hannah Ellis-Peterson’s article is over five years old, however, there has not been an update since this survey, meaning these are the most accurate figures for rates of pay. The recent unionisation of Stage Directors UK on 18 July 2022 is also indicative of no further systemic change.