BWW Blog: A Day in the Life of a Directing Major

As a theatre major, your weeks are pretty unique from one to the next. Besides classes, there are rehearsals, performances, production work, and college life in general with which to be concerned. Sometimes, those things overlap and the week gets hectic. But what might it look like to be a sophomore directing major?

A typical Monday starts with the challenge of waking up, usually after hitting the snooze button on my phone for at least an hour. Luckily, I don't have class until 1:30 pm, so I am able to fit in homework or catch up on reading without staying up late or waking up too early. Every Monday and Wednesday I have two classes, Stage Movement and Directing 1. Stage Movement has a dress code, all black and moveable, so I don't have to stress about picking out clothes. Yoga pants and a black tee go nicely together. Having the movement class first is really helpful since I have anxiety, so I am able to get the blood pumping and work out any jitters I might have. We do a lot of movement exercises, meant to explore Laban's principles of movement and open up our vocabulary for performance.

Directing comes next, where we either discuss an assignment or observe one of our peers run a rehearsal for a scene. There is a lot of text analysis and point-of-view involved, as directing is contrived mostly from those two elements. A fun thing in my department is where most majors and minors attend a meeting every Monday at 5 in the proscenium theatre. We get to hear about upcoming events and auditions within the department, students can make announcements, and sometimes we have guest lecturers come to provide a seminar on a variety of topics. I find it nice to be able to catch up with people I might not typically see around campus, as well as bond with department through shared experiences.

Tuesdays and Thursdays also share the same class schedule, Theatre History 1, First Year Writing, and Technical Theatre for Directors. I do have to force myself to wake up in time for my 9:30 class, but I haven't slept through it yet so I consider that a success. We are currently starting up a role-playing workshop called Stages of Power that is exploring the time of Shakespeare and Marlowe in Elizabethan England. Then I move to First Year Writing, where I am developing my voice and technique as a writer in different genres of literature. I get a break in between my morning and afternoon classes to take a nap or get started on some homework. When 3:30 rolls around, I join a group of women in class to learn the technical side of directing, like what elements of each area of production we should have an understanding of to properly communicate our ideas; I'm currently studying M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang for my final project.

On Fridays, I only have Sophomore Directing Portfolio, where myself and the other sophomore directing major get to meet with our directing professor and advisor to learn more in-depth topics that relate to directing. We've studied different directors in recent history, learned how to give a directing pitch, and have even observed three different directors in the rehearsal room. We've just started our 10 minute play that will be performed at the end of the semester in front of the department, as part of our directing curriculum. I've finally had the chance to put my directing cap on and learn the craft that I want to pursue a career in. I'm growing my knowledge and my resume as I get to work with amazing individuals to create art onstage and I can't imagine doing anything else!

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