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Directing

Bring your vision to life.

Explore practical directing tips, rehearsal strategies, and creative approaches for both student and teacher directors. From first read to final performance, find what you need to shape strong, confident productions.

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Directing

Directing First-Time Actors: Building Confidence, Community, and Creative Growth

Directing first-time actors is both exciting and challenging. New performers often arrive with enthusiasm, curiosity, and a desire to belong. But they may also carry anxiety, uncertainty, or...

Directing

Staging Theatre in Non-Traditional Spaces

Theatre teachers are often faced with staging productions in less-than-optimal spaces. Whether it’s on a platform in the corner of a classroom or the stage in the cafeteria, theatre teachers have...

Directing

10 Tasks for Drama Students During Post-Show

You did it! Your performance is done. But we don’t want all your students to just disappear after the curtain closes, especially if you’ve got more performances coming up. This article is focused...

Directing

10 Tasks for Student Technicians During Pre-Show

Before the performers arrive at the performance space, the student technicians are already there and hard at work. For the purposes of this article, “student technicians” refers to the entire...

Directing

10 Tasks for Student Actors During Pre-Show

The hour before a performance starts is always an exciting and potentially nerve-wracking time. Everyone is feeling their feels, there are many moving parts and tasks that need to be completed in a...

Directing

10 Tasks for Student Actors To Do During Rehearsals

When you’re creating a rehearsal schedule for your upcoming production, whenever possible you should only call student actors to rehearse for the scenes they’re actually in. There’s no sense in...

Directing

Creative Ways to Stage Theatre on a Tight Budget

It’s a struggle to stage a production with little or no funds, but it’s not impossible! If your program is new or small, chances are you’re dealing with a tight budget. So how do you stage a show...

Directing

How to get Students to Commit to a Role

Does this sound familiar: A student auditions for a play. That student is cast. Halfway through the rehearsal process they either start missing rehearsals because of “other commitments” or drop the...

Directing

How to Develop and Empower Student Directors

Have you ever had a student who’s a natural leader and has a knack for staging? Or maybe a student who isn’t comfortable in the spotlight but loves the creative process? These could be your budding...

Directing

Planning to Direct Your First Full-Length Play

If you have only ever directed one-acts or scenes, you may not be aware of how much more planning and preparation it takes to stage a longer script. Here is some information that will help you...

Directing

How to Teach Blocking without Boring Your Students

Blocking is fundamental to acting. Whether staging a two-person scene or 30-person musical number, how you arrange the actors onstage is an important part of the storytelling. Unfortunately,...

Directing

3 Tips to Help Student Actors Stop Fidgeting

It’s common for young or beginning drama students to get wiggly or fidgety onstage, especially if they’re part of the ensemble or not speaking, singing, or dancing at that moment. It’s as though...

Directing

Tips for Better House Manager Speeches

A house manager speech is a short spiel presented prior to a theatrical performance, where the audience is welcomed and given some last minute information about the show and/or some basic theatre...

Directing

Creative Ideas for Staging Chase Scenes

It’s always exciting to have action-packed sequences in your show, and chase scenes are both great fun and challenging to stage. Whether a character is being chased by a villain, chasing after a...

Directing

Creative Ideas for Staging Violence Without Using Fake Blood

The visual of blood onstage creates an immediate visceral reaction for audience members — it evokes feelings of fear, pain, injury, life and death. But using fake blood onstage can be challenging,...

Directing

Creative Ideas for Staging Flying Sequences Without Wires

Peter Pan, Mary Poppins, and The Wizard of Oz are just some of the wonderful stories featuring characters that can fly. Many great plays feature flying sequences, but how do we stage those...

Directing

Creative Ideas for Staging Intimate Moments Without Kissing

Many wonderful scripts feature lovely intimate moments between characters: a wedding, a special moment with a crush, a declaration of love, a first kiss. However, many actors (of all ages, not just...

Directing

Issue-Based Plays in Rehearsal

So you’ve chosen to produce an issue-based play with your students. Awesome! Issue-based plays are a great learning opportunity for your students and your audiences, as they tackle issues such as...