From Page to Stage: The Creative Process
by Sami DeSocio
As an actor we are given scripts and parts and are told by our director what to do, what to dress, where to stand, and where to go when. And sometimes we get so caught up in all of that and miss the creative process of how it all comes together to make the magic the audience sees.
After the show is picked, and the actors have been cast the creative process can begin with a first table reading. The actors, director and the creative team all sit around a table with scripts and highlighters and begin just reading through it to hear it out loud together for the first time. At this time, everything is so fresh and new and the buzz and excitement in the air of what’s to come can be cut with a knife!
As the weeks of rehearsal move forward, you walk into each session a little more prepared than the last one. You talk about your characters, you do characterizations on them, you get to know them individually and how they work as a group. You put your trust in the director that the vision they have will carry to the stage in order to tell the story to the audience. As actors, you find yourselves getting closer and closer and forming a family within yourselves.
The costumes get added not too long after, and there! In that room with those costumes on for the first time, for me is when the show becomes real. Its one thing to talk these characters through and figure them out psychologically, but it’s a completely different thing when you all, a group of once-strangers now stand in a circle and actually see your character and the people in your character’s life.
The countless hours of rehearsals, line readings and dinners all blend together as the set goes up, run throughs are done and notes are given each night by your director. This will go on for weeks until opening night. That night is the one you’ve all been waiting for. These characters are real, the set is your home, and the theatre is your sanctuary. The notes haven’t stopped of course, but for any good director, on opening night they will bring the stage manager into the dressing room and announce “this is no longer my show. It’s yours now”, then they will take their seat in the house and allow you as the actors to breathe life into the story you need to tell the audience!
As actors we measure our years in what show we were in. We bounce from role to role, life to life, character to character, family to family and theater to theater without ever thinking twice. But the process, the creative process behind each of them is what gives life to theater and makes it so incredibly unique!
For any actors out there, I challenge you. I challenge you, the next time you’re cast in a show, to really stop and look around and enjoy and thrive in the creative process. I promise you won’t regret it.