There’s no sure-fire recipe for making good theatre. Every time I’ve been a part of it, it feels like a little miracle. Some of the best theatre I’ve been a part of nearly didn’t make it to opening night. To attempt to address this enormous question, I’ll focus on a very few essential elements that I believe help every time, regardless of budget or experience.

Choose a good play that is a good match for the collaborators. Great plays take many different shapes, but all have basic and important human truths to celebrate, question, search for, reveal or magnify. I believe that good plays provide a transformation based on that truth for somebody in the play or the audience. A play is a good match for the collaborators if it sparks passion.  A play should not be chosen simply because it is innovative, timely, a premiere, a shocker, was a hit somewhere else, is famous, has roles for ensemble members, is funny, is cheap to produce, fits a theatre’s mission statement or is written by a popular playwright.  At Famous Door, we read countless plays as a group. Not every good play sparked passion. When a play was worth doing, there was electricity in the room. Everybody had ideas about how to make it happen and wanted to be a part of it. Every time we made good theatre, it started that way.

Truth in art is subjective.  Great plays can be produced over and over with different directors and be fantastic and revelatory each time.  That’s possible because each director decides which truth in the play the production will celebrate, magnify, etc.  A play can have different truths that can each work on stage, but a director must not only be committed to one but must have the desire and ability to clearly articulate it for all collaborators.  Otherwise, artists can spin off in disparate directions.  The director should lead everyone down the same path so that style, tone, pacing, staging, casting, design, lobby display, poster, ads etc., are in harmony. Everything has its foundation in that truth. That important chosen truth needs to be protected by the director so that no single element becomes the darling of a production. When the truth of a play is outshone by any production element, the audience might be entertained but might also be left cold. If after a play the audience is mostly raving about a given performance, that’s great for the actor, but the profound experience is not about watching a performance, it’s about the audience and the story they’ve experienced. 

Pull actors together early by getting them to tell the same story and let them know how they’re doing in that regard.  This not only pulls the play together but it can unify a cast and provide the foundation for working towards the same passionate goal.  That gives an ensemble a purpose larger than the individuals and builds camaraderie. Actors are usually intelligent, hard-working and creative individuals who will go off on their own if no one is at the helm guiding the play towards its purpose. I often hear actors say, “I don’t know if I’m doing what the director wants,” or “I don’t know if I’m going in the right direction.” That might sound like a sensitive ego talking, but until an actor knows they’re telling the right story, they’re apt to keep tinkering with it. Sometimes we tinker ourselves right out of the play.

Good actors want to live in a moment to moment relationship with fellow actors, tell the story clearly, serve the play (if they don’t, they’re not good actors), but can be reduced to bad on-stage behavior when they are not rooted in the truth of the play. Demons can emerge and inappropriate displays of Drama and Comedy and Style and Precious or Impressive Emotional Displays (theater IEDs) can smother the truth of a character, a scene, a play. Even if we stay true, connected and honest, we still might be in totally different plays if the director has not chosen one story to tell and worked to keep everyone focused on the play’s intent.

Actors and directors work together to articulate the truth of the play. If a director cannot identify the truth of a play and chooses to try to unearth it in rehearsal from scratch, I believe they have not chosen the right play.  I have grown to believe that complicated theatre games and exercises intended to produce the meaning of scenes or the core of a character do not make good theatre. They are fun and can pull a cast together and can reveal some things about a character or scene, but often rather than reveal the truth of a scene, they distract from it. Often the product of a theatre game is discarded, leaving actors lost and starting over sometimes late in the process. Vision, clarity and communication are key.

About 10 years ago Cal MacLean directed The Living by Anthony Clarvoe for Famous Door. We started with table work. I expected that we would read the play through, talk about it and go home. I was in the first scene and started with an approach I felt good about, but Cal had other ideas. With everyone at the table we spent a long time discussing this little scene and how it served the play as a whole. We continued similarly with each scene and Cal’s purpose emerged. It’s a complicated play with a large cast, subplots, history, style, accents and more. All of that was important, but Cal used three days of table work to get everyone rooted in the same simple and important human truth of the story, so we wouldn’t get distracted from it or have differing ideas about it as we proceeded into a very complicated rehearsal process. In my memory, Famous Door’s The Living was great theatre.

Here are a few last thoughts about what makes good theatre: a good sense of humor in rehearsal which is not based in meanness; love for each other—even if that means just being nice and respectful; no competition in the room; honest, committed and energetic acting; joy; producers who are passionate about the production and show appreciation for everyone involved; a belief that theatre is a celebration of the soul of each participant, and when the soul of a play is pursued, the soul of the audience is invited to emerge.

Laura Fisher was an ensemble member and former co-artistic director at Famous Door. She has acted on numerous stages throughout Chicago, including Chicago Shakespeare, Court and The Goodman.

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