The Directing Degree

BY Becky Brett

Over and over again you hear a successful actor say, “Yes, I enjoy acting, but what I really want to do is direct.” Sure they’ve got something important they want to say. They want to be in charge and put forth their creative vision. But do they really know how to collaboratively communicate an artistic vision to other actors, designers or even their publicist?

While many area theatres offer directing classes for the casual or even professional theatre director, more comprehensive instruction can be found in the wealth of graduate directing programs in Chicago and the surrounding region. These Masters of Fine Art and Masters of Art programs are listed alphabetically by university. A couple of significant undergraduate programs are profiled at the end because undergraduate directing students at these schools have the opportunity to work with some of Chicago’s finest professional directors.

Always check out the university’s Web site for application requirements and deadlines. Perhaps you’ll find the right opportunity here for you to fulfill your auteur dreams…

DePaul University
Degrees offered: MFA
Program chair: Lisa Portes

Located in Lincoln Park, DePaul University’s theatre conservatory, The Theatre School at DePaul, offers a three-year MFA in directing. Lisa Portes is head of the MFA directing program, which admits only two students per year. Portes’ background includes teaching at the University of California-San Diego, Columbia University and Duke University. Her directing work has been seen nationwide at such theatres as the Kennedy Center, Playwrights Horizons and the Public Theatre. In Chicago, Portes has directed shows at Northlight, Next, Chicago Dramatists and Walkabout Theatre.

DePaul’s directing program focuses primarily on the relationship between the director, the actor and the text. “At the risk of sounding too ‘Catholic,’ theatre is really the art form in which word becomes flesh,” says Portes. “So how do you make that miracle happen?”

The answer lies in addressing three key issues through the students’ work. Portes explaines, “One is developing a deep understanding of the action and ideas of the text. The second is looking at how these miraculous creatures called actors work? And third, is bringing it all together by exploring the full vocabulary of the theatre through working with designers and looking at how design elements support and illuminate the work of the actor.”

Portes looks for directors who have been in the field a bit and already have a sense of their artistic focus. DePaul’s directing students have access to an array of very talented conservatory-trained actors, and it is important to Portes that the MFA directors have “a little age and experience.” She says, “It can be hard to wrangle the room if you’re just out of undergrad. The program can teach you craft, but not focus. You are responsible for young actors and designers, and you need to already have a sense of who you are as an artist.”

Before applying for DePaul’s directing program, she recommends answering for yourself, “Why do you want to direct?” and “What do you want to put out into the world?” She also notes that since the program is heavily focused on text and character, it is probably not the right program for you if you want to direct spectacle or plays with a lot of visual fireworks.

“It is more important that you have a curiosity about human behavior, that you have a sensitivity to the different textures of language, and a sense of your own artistic vision.”

Illinois State University
Degrees offered: MFA in Directing
Program Chair: Don LaCasse

Illinois State University has a three-year MFA in directing. Located in Normal, Illinois, the university is the home of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival. The program used to be chaired by Cal MacLean, who recently relocated to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he also serves as artistic director of the Clarence Brown Theatre. A new chair has not yet been named, although Don LaCasse, director of theatre, is also on the directing faculty.

LaCasse said that ISU’s approach is to treat the director as a storyteller. “Great emphasis is placed on script analysis and working moment to moment,” he says. Also, the program is what they call “developmental,” which means they start the directors off with a small space and a short script and no budget (“Much like Chicago’s storefront theatres,” says LaCasse) and each semester their budget, script, technical support and venue increase. With ISU’s extensive facilities, students are required to direct in a variety of different physical set-ups, from theatre-in-the-round, to a thrust stage and finally with a traditional proscenium.

As with most MFA programs, third-year students are required to complete an internship with a professional theatre company. At ISU, students have worked with companies such as The Guthrie Theatre, Milwaukee Rep and the Manhattan Theatre Club, as well as the Goodman, Victory Gardens and Steppenwolf. Noted alumni include the founding members of Steppenwolf Theatre Company as well as Gary Griffin of Chicago Shakespeare, among others.

Each year, only two students are accepted into the program. ISU is a member of the University/Resident Theatre Association (U/RTA), which is a consortium of professional theatre training graduate programs and their associated professional theatre companies. (Northwestern and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are also members of U/RTA.) U/RTA holds what amounts to general auditions for directors at regional locations around the US. Check out their website at www.urta.com for interview dates.

Northwestern University
Degrees Offered: MFA
Program Chair: Anna Shapiro

Northwestern University, located in picturesque Evanston, Illinois, offers the only other MFA directing program in the immediate Chicago area. The program is chaired by Anna Shapiro, who has been affiliated with Steppenwolf since 1995, serving as the original director of the New Plays Initiative and now serving as an associate artist. Shapiro has numerous directing credits at Steppenwolf as well as Papermill Playhouse, Piven Theatre Workshop, Indiana Rep and Philadelphia Theatre Company, among others.

NU’s theatre department is currently chaired by director Rives Collins, who was able to shed some light on the workings of the MFA program, starting with the vibrant chair. “Anna has brought dynamic leadership to the program,” he says. “She has brought the best of Yale’s MFA program to the dynamism of Chicago theatre and mixed it with Northwestern’s rich tradition of and passion for text.”

Although NU’s directing program focuses heavily on text and storytelling, one word that Collins says emerges most frequently when describing the program is “collaboration.” He explains, “Our MFA program is housed with fabulous MFAs in design, who spend a lot of time in class together exploring text and image.” In fact, it is common for courses to be co-taught by members of the directing and design faculty. Mix that in with the doctoral candidates studying dramaturgy, history, literature and criticism and you have what Collins calls a “yeasty interface between the groups.”

He is quick to point out, though, that this is no “ivory tower program.” With NU’s connection to Chicago’s theatre community, and the internships all MFA candidates must complete, NU “launches them into the profession.”

Like ISU, NU also participates in U/RTA auditions and interviews. Three MFA candidates are admitted each year for the three-year program.

Roosevelt University, The Theatre Conservatory
Degrees Offered: MA
Program Chairs: Joel G. Fink and Jerry Proffit

Roosevelt University in downtown Chicago offers a “FastTrack Master of Arts” degree specifically designed for high school drama directors. It is a three-year program taken six weeks at a time during the summer, administered by Jerry Proffit and directed by Joel G. Fink, who is in charge of the Theatre Conservatory.

Since the program is geared toward secondary educators, coursework is very practical. Participants are required to bring scripts for the productions they are directing in the coming year, and assignments involve the plays that they bring. Classes are designed to address skills needed as a classroom theatre teacher, director and acting coach. After the third summer, the thesis production is done at the student’s home school, where Roosevelt flies in someone to review the director’s work, along with a local adjudicator.

While in Chicago, students in this program take full advantage of Chicago as a theatre city by attending shows around town as part of their study. (Tickets to eight theatre performances are included in the cost of tuition.)

Theatre directors often feel isolated in their profession, and that feeling can be magnified at the high school level. Fink is extremely proud of being able to create a community for secondary theatre professionals, noting, “At the college level, at least, you generally have colleagues. In high school, these [students] are often the only person teaching theatre in the school.”

That community offers support beyond the summer, as participants keep in touch, offering each other help and advice throughout the school year. Fink recalls one of his proudest moments when he was in the airport heading to London. “I ran into one of our graduates who said several of them had gotten together to take a workshop in London.”

Enrollment is open to high school theatre teachers, and they have a total of 30 participants in the program at any given time. They have a rolling admissions policy, which means if eight people graduate, then they accept eight more the following year.

University of Wisc. – Madison
Degrees Offered: MFA
Program Chair: Norma Saldivar

The University of Wisconsin in Madison offers an MFA in directing. The program is headed by Norma Saldivar, who has directed regionally throughout the Midwest and on the West Coast. It is a three-year program with only three participants moving through at any given time, making it highly competitive.

Saldivar explains that there is an emphasis on storytelling and working with actors, but that now she is starting to incorporate more physical theatre. “We have classes in Viewpoints, kabuki and other physical Asian styles.” Students are even required to take an improvisational movement class in the dance department.

Although there is a certain amount of core work in text analysis, character development and collaboration, once those requirements are met, students can work with any number of theatrical forms, such as theatre for young audiences, opera staging, classical theatre and even a new program in theatre for social justice. As a whole, the program blends learning the craft of directing with development of the director’s artistic voice.

Since this is such a highly individualized program, students are chosen based on their experience and what areas they want to develop in their own craft. “If they have a sense of where they’re heading, I can take them and mentor them,” Saldivar says.

However, just because a student shows interest in a particular area of directing, that may change when faced with the numerous opportunities UW Madison affords. Saldivar describes one student who wanted to follow classical theatre then developed an interest in working with children in social issues. “I don’t want to lock them into any one style because by facing certain challenges, they open themselves to things they didn’t really know they wanted.”

Undergraduate Programs

Two undergraduate programs deserve special mention due to their proximity to professional Chicago theatre directors.

Columbia College Chicago offers a B.A. in directing. They also offer a B.F.A. in directing. They usually have between 15 and 20 majors at a time. The preliminaries are taught in Directing I, where the students direct each other in scenes. In Directing II they each direct a one-act. In Directing III they each direct a full-length play. To get a B.A. in directing, they have to direct one more full-length play as an independent project. To get a B.F.A. in directing, they have to direct two more full-length plays as independent projects. The students in Directing II, III and working on independent projects are supervised by Susan Padveen, David Puszkiewicz, and Sheldon Patinkin. Among the other faculty working with them are Terry McCabe, Sean Graney, David Cromer and Paul Amandes, as well as such designers as Frances Maggio, Jackie Penrod, Emil Boulos, Patti Roeder and Tom Kieffer. "It’s the most extensive undergraduate directing program around," said theatre chair Patinkin. "It’s one of the main reasons why there are as many as 20 shows a semester produced by the Theater Department."

Loyola University offers a liberal arts theatre degree (also a BA), and students who choose to focus their efforts on directing have the opportunity to work with Jonathan Wilson, whose professional credits include productions at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut and Seattle Rep, as well as the Goodman, Northlight, Victory Gardens, Pegasus Players and the Court Theatre, among many others.

Three directing classes are offered, which focus on developing the collaborative skills needed to communicate with the various constituencies required of a director. According to Wilson, the beginning class teaches young directors how to “coach the actors and to find the tension in the play” by focusing on the actor/director relationship and character development. An advanced directing class focuses on the director/designer relationship. The third class is a weekly seminar for directors, designers and stage managers involved in the studio productions.

2006 College Issue

The Directing Degree

Shedding Light on UIC’s “Invisible” Theatre Department

The Dean of Chicago Theatre