Just over a month until auditions. Or, as any aging director will tell you, the most important 48-72 hours of the entire process.

There are things you can affect as a director. Notice I did not say control. Control is an illusion and the sooner you rid yourself of any belief in its existence, the better. Much like God, it probably does exist in some sort of quantum / impossible to perceive by our feeble brains type way – but! You are not going to encounter it/them in the few weeks you have directing the show, so cut yourself some slack, my dude.

What was I talking about.

There are things you can affect as a director. Just about any text is flexible to some degree, ways to shade emphasis, focus the attention of the audience. A whole panoply of theater language, dirty tricks, blocking riddles, and vibes manipulation. I like the director chair because you have a lot of weapons in your arsenal – and the whole structure of your crew and the inherent leadership dynamic are built to aid the director in getting the show across the finish line. You might even accomplish some of your more esoteric aesthetic or artistic visions! Directing is about making choices (hopefully quickly) – and I often view each choice as increasing or decreasing the percentage chance of the show working – of the show being ‘good’ — because it’s still a dice roll at the end. You can have worked your way up to a solid 80% chance – and still the show may not work. That phantom, Control, again. Plays are organisms and they grow and mutate while you watch – so much of it is just not up to you. Which can be paralyzing — you can only influence so little of the bones, you want to make sure you are making the most of the choices you make. The best one, the best possible one, or maybe just the second-worst decision.

Casting is the most influential and borderline permanent decision you will make. Especially in amateur theater where you’re working with volunteers. I’m sure it’s difficult to replace a cast member in professional theater – but with the reduced timeframe and magnified social repercussions of local dirtbag theater, it becomes exponentially more complicated and fraught. Effectively, the cast you select after auditions is the one you’re closing the show with – barring illness or a family emergency. There are noted and juicy exceptions to this locked away in my memory, available for the low price of a few drinks and some chili-cheese fries to any who are curious.

But once you’ve picked a cast, you are stuck with them. And with all the tools the director may have – fixing an actor that is just wrong is not something you will ever truly succeed at. Most crucially if they are a load-bearing part of the production, one of your leads.

They may be completely lovely people. They may be working their ass off for you. You might be dating them. (don’t do this)

But they’re wrong. You saw something in them at auditions. Or maybe you’ve seen them perform dozens of times, across many roles. They seemed perfect, everyone on your production team enthusiastically agreed. But as rehearsals go on and the show gets on its feet, they’re sitting in the center of it and it is not working. And there is nothing you can do to direct your way out of it. Some chemistry, some alchemy, some gutter sorcery is absolutely misfiring and you as the director are going to be the one to realize it waaaaay before anyone else. The ceiling of your show’s success just crashed down and there’s no repairing it and you still have three more weeks before the show opens.

I’m being hyperbolic, sure. But this is what keeps you up at night, roaming the darkened halls of your manor. And you have to be reasonable with yourself – this is amateur theater after all. Plenty of times the best course is to just say ‘They are doing the best they can and they are doing everything the show and I ask of them. And I can live with that – and I can even celebrate that.’ Not everyone gets the same thing out of an artform. For them, this performance that is making your stomach eat itself, is perhaps deeply important to them – maybe even meaningful in the grand sense, something they will look back on for the rest of their life with affection and pride.

Which is great.

So great.

I don’t want that for Antigone or ANTIGONE. I want the right people to walk through the door and I want to recognize them and put them in the right places with the right support. I zig and zag at just the right times, I dodge the mistakes and catch the perfect moments. The dice are already rolling. The dice are already rolling. The dice are already rolling.

I started these diaries as an experiment – a companion piece to the production itself. And just to get back in the habit of typing more often – writing is a diagnostic for the brain. I want to keep an eye on how bad it is in there. Little surprise these turned into just documents about anxiety. Well not just. But you get it.