Looking Ahead: DirectorFest

The Fall Directors Fellowship will culminate in DirectorFest in December. Drama League will produce an Equity showcase for the four fellows through an evening of one-acts. Each director will choose their own one-act, which will have its own union stage manager, and a cast of up to four actors. However, we will all share the same team of designers, who will design for each individual show, as well as attempt to come up with a vision for the whole evening. For all of us, this is a unique opportunity. Acting showcases are commonplace; all around the country, conservatories produce an evening in which their actors and actresses show off their chops in a program of monologues and two-person scenes (sometimes in ensemble pieces). Agents, casting directors, personal managers and producers attend, and out of that platform, these emerging artists finagle their entry into the industry. DirectorFest will provide the four fall fellows one of the only directing platforms of this nature. It will be an evening in which we can present a flavor of what we can do to interested industry professionals. We hope that something will emerge out of this presentation, or out of the various relationships that we are forging in our assistantships, which will lead us to the next thing and then to the thing after that, in the time-honored tradition of building a career in the arts.

Choosing a one-act which will give us the right vehicle to showcase what we can do with actors, with design, and with an industry audience is a predictably hectic race. This is what my station at the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library looked like after a day of reading published one-acts:

There are two other avenues open to us in one-act selection. We can either work on a new play with an established collaborator, or find an unpublished or underproduced one-act in the vaults of an emerging playwright. Three out of four plays have been approved by the artistic producer for the evening (Roger Danforth), so stay tuned for the program for this year's DirectorFest, coming soon!

(posted by Ed)