Many Ways of Making Work: Methods and Techniques Shared

The Lab's three weeks involved many of the directors sharing techniques, directing plays, discussing the directing style of master artists they worked with, and sharing experiences from different parts of the world. Zimbabwean Lab director Langhlihle Styx Mhlanga explored Sophocles' Oedipus with the help of Lab director Lileana Blain-Cruz and with company actors and the Lab directors as the play's chorus and with choreographer Maija Garcia and percussionist Yoshihiro Takemasa. Alex Harvey delved into a new version of the 1920's Expressionist play Brokenbrow, by Ernst Toller with dramaturg April Donahower, and playwright Sarah Ruhl led a discussion on Expressionist drama and its influences on contemporary American playwriting. Four new plays were rehearsed for a week: The Master Shepherds of Hookjook by Yusef Miller, directed by Crystal A. Dickenson, Absalom by Zoe Kazan, directed by David Auburn, Goldstar, Ohio by Michael Tisdale, directed by Andy Paris and The Sleeping World by Crystal Skillman, directed by Scott Ebersold. Four Lab members, Craig Baldwin, Ron Bashford, Aaron Oster and Daniel Waldron, each directed the third act of Shakespeare's Macbeth in unusual site-specific locations around the building as part of an investigation into how space defines a director's interpretation and approach to a text. And as these rehearsal investigations proceeded, the Lab hosted a designer clambake, visited with Master Designer Ming Cho Lee at his Designer Clambake, and discussed lighting design with the Tony Award winning trio of lighting designers from The Coast of Utopia, Brian MacDevitt, Kenneth Posner and Natasha Katz. Additional guests in the Lab included Jack O'Brien, Bartlett Sher, Anna D. Shapiro, George C. Wolfe and Aubrey Sekhabi from South Africa. Finally, Sekhabi joined more than a dozen international alumni of the Directors Lab who returned to help brainstorm a new initiative which aims to create a network of theaters around the globe which can invite directors to explore work from their own cultures in a new environment.