In Baltimore, it doesn’t matter if you are an actor, writer or director, knowing how to use stage directions effectively will help you improve your craft. A good place to start is by making things short and sweet. Stage directions are meant to guide performers. The best ones, therefore, are clear and concise and can be interpreted easily. Consider your motivation. A script may tell an actor to walk quickly downstage center and little else. That’s where a director and actor must learn how to work together in Baltimore, to better interpret this guidance in a manner that would seem appropriate for the character.
Remember, practice makes perfect. It takes time for a character’s habits, sensibilities and gestures to become natural, especially when they have been decided by someone else. Achieving this means lots of rehearsal time both alone and with other actors, as well as being willing to try different approaches when you hit a roadblock. Directions are suggestions, not commands. Stage directions are the playwright’s chance to shape physical and emotional space through effective blocking. That said, directors and actors don’t have to be faithful to stage directions if they think a different interpretation would be more effective.