Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 167
Fight scenes are not always duels or military battles. Here actors Roger Allam and Jodhi May have at each other with
ordinary office chairs, as staged by Fight Director Malcolm Ranson in David Harrower’s Blackbird, an intense drama
about pedophilia and its horrific aftermath. The play, directed by the acclaimed German director Peter Stein, was
performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006. © Geraint Lewis
most obvious of directorial functions. Directorial composition,
as it is sometimes called, is the one thing directors
are always expected to do and to do well, and it is the
one they are most often seen doing; it is no wonder traditional
textbooks on directing tend to be largely devoted
to this function.
The medium of staging is the actor in space and
time—with the space defined by the acting area and settings
and the time defined by the duration of the theatrical
event and the dynamics of its dramatic structure.
Staging should aim to create focus for the play’s themes,
lend credibility to the play’s characters, generate interest
in the play’s actions, unify the play’s appearance, provoke
suspenseful involvement in the play’s events, and,
in general, stimulate a fulfilling level of engagement for
the entire production.
The basic structure of staging is called blocking,
which refers to the timing and placement of a character’s
entrances, exits, rises, crosses, embraces, and other
major movements of all sorts. The pattern that results
from the interaction of characters in motion provides the
framework of an overall staging; it is also the physical
foundation of the actors’ performance. Many actors have
difficulty memorizing their lines until they know the
blocking that will be associated with them.
The director may block a play either by preplanning
the movements (preblocking) on paper or by allowing
the actors to improvise movement on a rehearsal set
and then fixing the blocking sometime before the first
performance. Often a combination of these methods is
employed, with the director favoring one method or the
other depending on the specific demands of the play, the
rehearsal schedule, rapport with the acting company, or
the director’s own stage of preparation. Complex or stylized
plays and settings and short rehearsal periods usually
dictate a great deal of preblocking; simple domestic