Research
Dissertation | Facilitauteur: Agency, Ethics, and Feminist Ideologies in the Rehearsal Room
Directing demands flexibility. Directors must be visionaries who collaborate well; organized administrators who adjust to chaos; and empathetic responders who know when to push actors past their comfort level. Within this demanding discipline, the ways in which a director works with her cast can vary wildly. While most directors are considerate collaborators, dangers arise when one person wields total executive control over a rehearsal room. How are directors ethically prepared to work with actors? How can directors achieve their artistic vision while also creating a space that allows others to explore with safety?
My project, Facilitauteur: Agency, Ethics, and Feminist Ideologies in the Rehearsal Room, sits at the center of a changing conversation in which practitioners are creating ethical methodologies for working with actors. With discussions of nontraditional director training appearing prominently in journals such as American Theatre Magazine, HowlRound, and the Stage Directors and Choreographers (SDC) Society Journal, directors are being prompted to consider the identity, lived experience, and cultural background of the actor. “Facilitauteur” is my term for a director who seeks to create what director Leigh Fondakowski calls “an egalitarian society” within the rehearsal room. Merging the community-based term “facilitator” with a word often used to describe a singular visionary, “auteur,” I disrupt and expand on Eurocentric masculinist directing methodologies to create a practical blueprint for approaching directing work from the position of promoting artistic agency.
From 2018-2022, I interviewed over a dozen women directors across theatrical spheres, including professional, educational, and community-based theater. These directors included: May Adrales, Sarah Chalmers, Tisa Chang, Rachel Chavkin, Liz Diamond, Leigh Fondakowski, Sarah Holdren, Rhodessa Jones, Emily Mann, Leigh Silverman, Lois Weaver, Tamilla Woodard, and Kat Yen. I observed directors in their rehearsal processes and participated in director-led workshops. Together, these facilitauteurs have made visible longstanding abuses of power, drawn attention to the lack of gender and racial diversity within the discipline, and are working in the margins to disrupt the traditional hierarchal directing. My dissertation responds to calls for more inclusive directorial pedagogies, with each case study introducing practical directing methodologies that serve to artistically enfranchise actors.
My project, Facilitauteur: Agency, Ethics, and Feminist Ideologies in the Rehearsal Room, sits at the center of a changing conversation in which practitioners are creating ethical methodologies for working with actors. With discussions of nontraditional director training appearing prominently in journals such as American Theatre Magazine, HowlRound, and the Stage Directors and Choreographers (SDC) Society Journal, directors are being prompted to consider the identity, lived experience, and cultural background of the actor. “Facilitauteur” is my term for a director who seeks to create what director Leigh Fondakowski calls “an egalitarian society” within the rehearsal room. Merging the community-based term “facilitator” with a word often used to describe a singular visionary, “auteur,” I disrupt and expand on Eurocentric masculinist directing methodologies to create a practical blueprint for approaching directing work from the position of promoting artistic agency.
From 2018-2022, I interviewed over a dozen women directors across theatrical spheres, including professional, educational, and community-based theater. These directors included: May Adrales, Sarah Chalmers, Tisa Chang, Rachel Chavkin, Liz Diamond, Leigh Fondakowski, Sarah Holdren, Rhodessa Jones, Emily Mann, Leigh Silverman, Lois Weaver, Tamilla Woodard, and Kat Yen. I observed directors in their rehearsal processes and participated in director-led workshops. Together, these facilitauteurs have made visible longstanding abuses of power, drawn attention to the lack of gender and racial diversity within the discipline, and are working in the margins to disrupt the traditional hierarchal directing. My dissertation responds to calls for more inclusive directorial pedagogies, with each case study introducing practical directing methodologies that serve to artistically enfranchise actors.
Conference Curation
2020: Working Group Organizer; Changing Directions: Developing Feminist Leadership in the Rehearsal Room
Women and Theatre Program and Directing Focus Group, ATHE
Featuring: Ann Elizabeth Armstrong; Rana Esfandiary; Kym Moore; Christine Young
2019: Working Group Organizer; Changing Directions: Developing Feminist Leadership in the Rehearsal Room
Women and Theatre Program and Directing Focus Group, ATHE
Featuring: Anita Gonzalez; Faith Hillis; Nicole Hodges Persley; Emily Rollie (co-organizer); Ann M. Shanahan
2019: Symposium Organizer; Feminist Directions: Performance, Power, and Leadership (click here for photos)
Cornell University's Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
Featuring: Tisa Chang, Leigh Fondakowski, Holly Hughes, Rhodessa Jones, Peggy Shaw,
Lois Weaver
Women and Theatre Program and Directing Focus Group, ATHE
Featuring: Ann Elizabeth Armstrong; Rana Esfandiary; Kym Moore; Christine Young
2019: Working Group Organizer; Changing Directions: Developing Feminist Leadership in the Rehearsal Room
Women and Theatre Program and Directing Focus Group, ATHE
Featuring: Anita Gonzalez; Faith Hillis; Nicole Hodges Persley; Emily Rollie (co-organizer); Ann M. Shanahan
2019: Symposium Organizer; Feminist Directions: Performance, Power, and Leadership (click here for photos)
Cornell University's Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts
Featuring: Tisa Chang, Leigh Fondakowski, Holly Hughes, Rhodessa Jones, Peggy Shaw,
Lois Weaver