Often, particularly towards the end of the process, I think of myself less as a theatre director and more as someone who just directs the traffic. My job is to move the ideas and bits of the show into the places where they work best. Sometimes my job is also to say, 'No.'
Interpretation
A theatre director's role is about guiding creative ideas to their best expression.
In this quote, Robert Lepage emphasizes the importance of a director's role in the creative process as one that involves not only organization and management but also discerning judgment. By likening his work to directing traffic, he highlights the necessity of moving creative elements to their optimal positions and sometimes making difficult decisions to omit certain ideas that do not serve the overall vision, underscoring the collaborative yet hierarchical nature of theatrical production.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about the responsibilities of a theatre director during a drama class.
A puppet, for example, is just a piece of wood, a couple of rivets, but put them together, and if you know how to do it, and the audience's imagination joins in with this, then a miracle will come out of that machine. That is what we and the audience do in the theatre - we create miracles in that space.
I will always demand the right for theatre to talk about anything and anyone. Without exception. None.
Swing is extreme coordination. It's a maintaining balance, equilibrium. It's about executing very difficult rhythms with a panache and a feeling in the context of very strict time. So, everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.
The person of old had the same brilliance of mind that we assume we have now. But that which made a thing become manifest for the first time is our great moment of creative happening.
Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.
Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,_x000D_ Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam_x000D_ And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.
Indie world won't have me, and mainstream world treats me like an alien, but here I am still floating between these two worlds.
We're always observing, and we're cautious people. We really want attention, but at the same time, we're ashamed of wanting attention. All those bizarre qualities of being outside are necessary for being a writer.
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