On Intentionality (or Is This the Right Chair?)

When I was teaching high school theatre... Yes, I taught high school theatre for two and a half years. It wasn’t for me. I couldn’t stand the institution. The kids though... I liked the kids. Well, most of them. Plus, continuing contracts are like hen’s teeth and I am impatient.

In any case, when I was teaching high school theatre, one of my favourite lessons began with taking my students outside. It was fall as I remember. The leaves were turning. I made them look around and I said, “See? Outside is big.” Then we’d go back inside.

Our classroom was the community theatre. I made sure the stage was empty, nothing but the black drapes and a bare floor. I would then point to the stage and say, “Inside is small.”

They would look at me like I’d lost my mind.

It was the beginning of my lesson on intentionality though I didn’t use that word. It’s too big.

“Outside is big.” Remember, it is fall, the leaves are turning. So many leaves on so many trees. All different colours. And there is the school parking lot full of so many different cars: all different colours, makes and models. There is traffic going by on the road. The telephone poles and all the wires. The birds in the air. The pavement. The clouds. The building itself behind us. So much to look at. So much to absorb. Too much to focus on any one thing. Nothing has much individual importance. Our attention is undirected.

Then back inside. Remember, “Inside is small?” The black drapes that surround the stage are there for a reason: to remove as many distractions as possible from the message that the audience receives. Along with the proscenium arch, they work like a frame around a picture to stop the eye from wandering away to unimportant things. Distracting information is kept to a minimum and we have the opportunity to control what the audience’s eye sees and the information we give it.

Ever wonder why theatres spaces are painted black?

The next part of the lesson was to put a single chair, a traditional older wooden chair, on the stage and ask, “What story does this chair tell? What is going to happen?” They were high school kids. Getting responses out of them was like pulling teeth but eventually somebody would pipe up and offer something.

“It’s a doctor’s office. Somebody will come sit in it.”

“An interrogation.”

“Somebody just died.” I liked that kid a lot.

I’d replace the chair with a different one, one of those institutional molded plastic things on a bent steel frame, and ask the same question.

“It’s outside the principal’s office. Brydon was sitting in it.”

Everybody would laugh because Brydon probably had been sitting in it since I’d sent him to the office just ten minutes earlier for setting Laurie’s hair on fire... but the point would be made.

Every chair tells a different story. Or rather, is part of a different story. Each chair carries a different load of information based on our experience of chairs like it that we’ve seen over the course of our lives. Its colour, the material it’s made of, how it is situated on the stage. All of these things carry meaning too. Remind us of things we know. Just like synonyms that seem to mean the same thing all have different shades of meaning. Dark, midnight, shadowy, black, nocturnal, stygian. All the words mean essentially the same thing but all are distinct and carry with them a load of information that the others don’t have. As a writer, it is so important to use the right word.

I distinctly remember a book my mother (who was always writing) had on her shelf when I was a teenager. It was kind of like a combination dictionary and thesaurus but much more interesting. USE THE RIGHT WORD by S.I Hayakawa. A guide to synonyms. Hayakawa would list the synonyms and explain their various shades of meaning. I was fascinated with that book.

I’m getting sidetracked. I do that a lot. There are just so many interesting things in the box.

Back on the empty stage, the chairs are like those synonyms. The point I was making is that the stage is a tabula rasa. Latin for “blank slate.” We, the audience, have entered this space with an expectation of “story.” What will appear before us will have meaning and, put all together, will create a cohesive experience that is outside our normal lives. It will all tie together. Everything that appears up there will bring with it some information that will enrich that story.

Unlike being outside, our attention as an audience is specifically directed toward what appears on the stage. As artists telling the story on that stage, we need to choose very carefully which chair best fits with our story. If I use the wrong chair, just any old chair I happen to find nearby, I’ve lost control of the message and the audience will get the wrong information and my story will become confused, weakened.

This same concept applies to everything I put out there under the lights and everything that happens there. All the set furnishings, the set itself, the lights we focus on it, the colours I paint it, the props the actors use. If the actors are drinking highballs, I want them to be drinking from highball glasses. Their costumes. Are his pants the right style, the right period, the right colour, the right fabric? All of these things have different meanings. Choose the right damn pair of pants. The sound design we decorate the play with. Is that the right car pulling up outside? Or does it sound more like a pick up? Choose the right sound or the sound is distracting and will throw the audience out of the play. Well, some of them. The ones who are paying attention.

The actor’s job then is to apply this same concept to their performance. Everything we say or do out there comes with a red wheelbarrow full of meaning. Does this gesture indicate that I don’t care or that I am angry or that I’m hurt? I need to be aware of the meaning that my work delivers to the audience. Every tone of voice, every gesture, every pause or change of pace. Everything carries meaning. Delivers meaning to the audience. Each aspect of my performance at each moment should be chosen with intention.

Oh my lord, you protest. It’s impossible to be that particular. It is. But that’s the work. I do the best I can. An important part of my work as a director is to reflect meaning back to the actor. When their work is delivering the wrong information, they need to know that.

Amongst all the many things I need to know as a director is how my audience interprets meaning. This requires a deep understanding of the cultural zeitgeist. My audience, of course, has a wide variety of experiences. They all bring different filters to the theatre through which to watch the show. They all interpret meaning in slightly different ways. I endeavour to thread my way through those meanings to find some kind of median. It is intuitive work. The rise of the internet has fractured our social fabric into innumerable pieces. This certainly doesn’t make the work any easier.

If we pay close enough attention to all the details, work hard to get them right, we create a close enough facsimile of a reality that the audience can buy into it for an hour or two. We trigger that “willing suspension of disbelief.” We carry them away.

If we are sloppy, if they get thrown out by too many things that don’t fit, then that suspension of disbelief is suspended. They are no longer wrapped in the story we are telling. We’ve lost them. They resign themselves to thoughts like, “They look like they’re having fun up there.” Or, “Jeez, I never thought Bob from the bakery could remember all those lines.”

I work on the stage or behind the scenes with a burden of responsibility to tell the best story I can. The audience, each one of them, has paid good money to be here. More important than that, they have given of their time to come experience the art I have created. What an honour. I am compelled to receive this gift with some humility. My art had better be the best I can make it. I need to have made as many intentional choices as I possibly can. I am not capable of perfection by any means, but I can strive toward it. Theatre is a community event. It doesn’t happen in solitude. The work is, ultimately, not about me, it is about what we do together tonight here in this room, the audience and me. The journey that we are bound together tonight to take. I am the conductor of this train, the guide on this journey. If the audience can’t stay on board, if my work is sloppy or incomplete and they are thrown out because the information they are receiving is confusing, then I have failed to do my job as an artist.