Senior Theatre Directors Reflect on Their 2020 Experiences
By Lily Telegdy ‘23
Every year the Boston College Theatre Department puts on two workshop shows directed and designed by students. This learning experience gives student directors and designers the opportunity to collaborate with their peers while getting practical experience.
This year Ally Marie Lardner ’21 (she/her/hers) and Jacob Kelleher ’21 (he/him/his) showcased their talents in this year's workshops. They reflected with the BC Arts Journal about their experiences directing in their senior year during the COVID-19 pandemic
Jacob Kelleher ’21 (he/him/his)
Senior Theater Director of Proof by David Auburn
Who made you want to direct in your senior year? What did you direct and why did you choose to direct it?
I chose to direct because I want to go into educational theater. I want to direct high school or middle school one day, like with kids after school. So I wanted the experience of directing a show in college to help me prep for that. And I also had seen a lot of really good workshop shows and seen a lot of directors direct workshop shows over the years and had a lot of fun with it and I wanted to also have fun and give it a shot. So that was why I chose to direct. I chose to direct Proof by David Auburn. I chose Proof because really because of Dr. Houchin. I was originally looking for a comedy to direct, and I was sitting in the greenroom reading a play one day and Dr. Houchin came in and he was like, “oh,” and I said, “What,” and he said “that is not the show for you,” and I said, “Okay.” Then he laughed and he came back with a stack of five plays. And he said, “these are better”, and then he gave them to me. Four of them were plays that either we had done already in the last four years or written by a playwright that we had done in the last four years so I said we can't do those, but then one of them was Proof . I read Proof and I really really liked it and I just found that I really connected with it. Because I am a math major, and it's about math and I'm from Chicago and the play takes place in Chicago, and I really enjoyed the story as well. I think that's why I chose it.
Who made you want to direct in your senior year? Who inspires you to direct?
The people that have made me want to direct have been the directors that I've worked with who've been really fun to work with as a stage manager. And also like my peers that I've watched direct over the years also like Meg [Ellis ’20] and Lexi [Auth ’19]. But I also think that I really wanted to direct for myself as much as, if not, more so than I want to direct because of someone else. I find myself really inspired by Luke's [Luke Jorgenson, Theatre Department Chair] directorial style. Because for me, it's all about having fun, first, and enjoying the process and enjoying the work. And I think that's how Luke feels also Luke's first concern is that everyone's having fun that everyone's enjoying their time in the rehearsal room. That's also what I really tried to do, try to encompass when I direct as well.
What is your favorite memory from directing your show?
My favorite part is just when we saw it on the screen for the first time in January with the masks and everything because we had been so much concerned that it was going to be a train wreck. Because of all the restrictions that had been put in place but when we saw it on that screen before the week before tech for that very first time and it looked like a play and it looked like something that would be tolerable. It was really fulfilling. And like, along with that, something that really sticks out to me it's just the way that we really triumphed over it. In spite of so many many challenges that we faced. So, I find myself really satisfied by the quality of the product we got relative to the amount of work, and difficulty that we face as well.
What is something you learned while directing? Specifically, while directing during Covid?
I really learned how to just roll with the punches. Every week or two there was a huge new thing thrown at us, and I got really good just being like we got it we will roll with what we've been given. But along with that finding that balance between rolling with the changes and with the punches, and also standing firm at maintaining what your original idea was because there’s a balance to that and you have to be able to do both really successfully to direct. But I also learned a lot about how to make decisions for the good of the show without stepping on people's toes because that's the hard thing when you're directing is how to not make decisions for other people or run over designers, but also keep everyone in the same wheelhouse that you've been envisioning.
If you were to give advice to someone who wanted to direct what would you say?
I think the best advice I could give would be that the director has to acknowledge that theater is always at its core a collaborative art form. And even though a director is often thought to be the head person in charge of the production. You still have to be really collaborative, you still have to be willing to listen to everyone who you work with and listen to everyone who's in the room and hear all the different ideas that are coming in, and filter through them. So the best advice I could give would be that a director can't do it alone, and they have to be able to rely on other people and work with other people, to make the best production that they can.
Ally Marie Lardner ’21 (she/her/hers)
Senior Theater Director of The History of Colors by by Charly Evon Simpson.
What did you direct and why did you choose to direct it?
I directed The History of Colors, this past March for the Boston College Theatre Department. I chose to direct it a year ago. I found the script two years ago, in my sophomore spring, I was doing a lot of research into what I wanted to do senior year. And I found this play and it really stuck with me because it had never been produced before. It was written by a female playwright of color and it was about women of color. It's a play about sisterhood, and about family, but not all of the actors had to be of the same race, which really opened up the casting requirements. And I had noticed, I observed and I still continue to observe the way sometimes shows are picked here with the best of intentions to like, include people of color and to include those stories, but without centering them. And I felt that this was a play that really centered women of color without fetishizing them or exoticizing them or making women of color explain trauma, or racial discrimination or profiling, or harassment. It just felt like a really safe play, in which women of color can explore what it means to be who they are, without explaining it to a white audience, or performing for a white gaze. I thought it was really fun and touching and poignant and beautiful.
Why did you choose to direct in general separate from the show that you picked? Why did you want to direct a workshop?
My sophomore spring, the reason that I started looking at plays was because I was working on a student show called The Aliens, I was stage managing it. And that was the first time ever that I had felt like a leader in a rehearsal room. I felt like I was an artistic collaborator on equal standing with designers and directors and, and actors and everything. And I really like that feeling of knowing that I shaped a story and that I was part of it. Obviously, being a stage manager is super different. But being there and then also working with a fellow student who was only a year older than me and seeing the way he worked, kind of showed me like, hey I think I could do this. He's still learning on the job. I could learn on the job. So yeah, that was what really gave me the inspiration. And also I think the self-confidence to know that it's something that I wanted to try.
Who made you want to direct in your senior year? Who inspires you to direct?
I definitely say Alex [O’Connor ’20] who directed The Aliens. I would also say I learned a lot from Dr. Houchin, who was the directing professor, who I also worked with as a stage manager while I was taking his class. So I got to learn from him not only as the stage manager but also as his directing students. And working with Paula Plum this past fall, again, I stage-managed her and seeing her super different approach to the rehearsal room really made me think about my own approaches to directing. I also think, at all times, I've learned the most from my fellow students, from people who I’ve seen directing, or even directors that I've worked with as an actor.
What is one of your favorite memories from directing The History of Colors? What stands out to you? What's one of your biggest takeaways?
So many good memories. I feel really blessed to have the team that I did. I think we all were on the same page about COVID safety and what we were comfortable with. How we were going to tell the story and how we were going to center the women of color, whose story was being told. On the first day of rehearsal, we had a whole company meeting where we did all the normal here's what a rehearsal schedule is and here's blah, blah, blah, blah. And then afterward, we did a bit of character work with one of the actors, Devyn [Itula ’22], who I've worked with a lot. She and I were just kind of diving right into the play right into who her character was at the core. At one point,we were talking about her character, her connections to her racial identity, and to her birth parents. So, we were just talking about that, and diving really deep into what it means to be a woman of color, what it means to think, am I white enough? Am I of any color enough? Am I you know, etc, etc. How do I exist in a, in a white space, or a space that assumes things about me, and we both just started crying. I know that this was supposed to be a good memory, but it is a good memory of us just like being amazed that we could be in a rehearsal room and look around and see, this is a space that's led, and that's created for women of color. And it's that, I think that was like my first real concrete sign that like I was on the right track with the play and with the approach and the people that I had asked to join me on it.
I think a second good memory is I invited two of my directing mentors, both white women, who are very, very smart, I respect them and their opinions so much. But after watching a couple of runs of the show, they both came to me with the same concern, they were like, your two white neighbor characters, they're just too much. They don't fit into the world of the play. We don't get it, we don't get how they fit in here, you should think about toning them down and making them a more natural part of the world. And for me, that was a good sign. That meant that I was on the right track, because these two whites, theatre artists didn't get it, they didn't get the way that me and my collaborators wanted those two white characters to be the butt of the joke they were not supposed to fit in. That was the whole point that they don't and that they forced themselves to fit into the world of the sisters. That sounds a bit full of contrasts, but that was a really good sign for me that I even though I was getting the feedback that I think they expected me to be like, oh, I'm doing something wrong, I took it as I'm on the right track for what I want to accomplish with the story. Then I think other than that, I have all not all positive memories of tech and dress rehearsals because it was definitely so stressful, and draining in a lot of ways, but that was a really special time to see how everyone worked together, and how all the ideas and visions I've had in my head for so long of this play were being actually translated for the stage and for the camera. The final version of the play was definitely so different than what I had originally imagined when I read the play two years ago, or when I proposed it one year ago or even was working on it in the rehearsal room a few months before opening. But that was still, while not perfect, and definitely not fun at times overall, that was a really magical week for me to see how everyone came together.
What is something you learned while directing? Specifically, while directing during Covid?
I learned a lot. I've done a couple of different things in theater before I've mentioned, but being a director, especially being a director of like a fully staged workshop thing. I've never felt more stupid. I felt that I was learning a lot every single day from everyone. With the COVID safety and stuff that was really important to me, because I had a bunch of actors who were newer, who were younger. The stage manager can say, “Oh, you can talk to us about anything,” there's always going to be that kind of like, “I don't know, they're in charge,” I say in quotes, “they're the leaders” and I kind of felt that would be exaggerated with a bunch of first-timers. So I tried to be really, really cognizant of that power dynamic and to lessen it as much as I could. By really bringing them into the process and asking them like, “hey, does this distancing feel okay to you?” Because this is what it feels like to me. How do you feel about masks and how we wear masks and if we're going to do the clear masks or stick with what we know, is safe. Things like that. I think this play, even though it's written before COVID times translated really well to social distancing to mask-wearing and to not touching. Because it is a story about how much do you know about others? How much do they know about you? Who are you really seen by? And what is it that makes you connected to somebody? Because it's not always what you think it is, you know, it’s not loving that makes you family, it's not being a maskless around someone that makes you love them. It's, it's deeper than that. I also think, shout out to the set designer Jun [Choi ’22]. Because I think the way that he and I collaborated on the furniture really made it look as if they weren't distanced, like a crazy amount.
Do you see continuing to direct as something you want to continue to pursue in your future as a job or as a passion?
I would like to, yeah, I think I would like to, but it's gonna be a lot harder in the “real world”, I think. But I also think that the same way that I came to it in college, I would want to take a long time to get there and see other parts of the process, so that I could be a well-rounded director, instead of someone who comes in and is like, I want to tell people what to do. I want to be the person who's like, I've done this and that, so I know what I need to do to make those jobs easier. And to make the whole experience go round, as well as tell the story that I want to tell.
If you were to give advice to someone who wanted to direct what would you say?
I think what I just said about trying as many other jobs on a process as you can, because it all really, it's not just like a way to fill up your resume. It's a way to bring different pieces of theatre art into whatever you end up directing. The way that people move on stage, the way that people move backstage, the way that scripts can move themselves.