So the talent is thin, but I'll mention three directors with superior talent. Probably the best director in town actually in the business is Dr. Becky Becker at Columbus State University. Directing is about details and Dr. Becker has to do that with college students so she gets extra points for putting on tight shows. She has a special talent for creating drama out of people's personal stories.
The e
xecutive director of the Columbus Symphony, JJ Musgrove, has most of his history in theater and is an excellent director. He has recently also acted in a Springer production. Once again, he has a firm grip on the details of a production. JJ and his wife, Kate, now also write for, direct, and operate the Columbus Mystery theater at the Marriott.Finally, he's rarely gotten the opportunity to direct, but Ron Anderson, the Associate Artistic Director at the Springer, is an excellent director. One can always expect a tight gripping production when he's listed in the credits.
For directors, Columbus gets a B.
1 comment:
Once again, I appreciate this bloggers compliments, but frankly everything I learned I learned from my wife, Dr. Kate Musgrove.
It is important to differentiate between those of us who are trained directors and those of us who are "actors who direct". Now if you fall into the second category, that is not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely means that you are approaching directing from a different viewpoint - from "on the stage".
Many of us who are actors-that-direct are never able to shake off the style of directing of "here is how I want you to do it, do it like I would". We go up on the stage, act things out for people, give them line readings (saying the lines for the actors like we want them to be said), and forget about the "big picture".
A trained director is one that has studied directing concepts, communication styles, and ways of achieving a single vision. This is done at the same time as allowing your designers and actors "create" as opposed to dictating a predetermined performance or design to them before they have the chance to imagine the role or the design themselves. This is the short fall for many directors in the industry.
There may be other people in Columbus that are teaching at the high school level that have advanced degrees in directing, so if there are, my apologies to them, but the only two in town that I know of are Troy Heard (MFA in directing) and Kate Musgrove (MFA and PhD in directing). If you watch their productions, no matter how much you might like or not like them, you recognize a cohesiveness to the design, acting, and overall production elements that is missing in many other shows.
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