Introduction

The best thing I have ever seen performed live was the Broom Hill Opera from South Africa performing their interpretation of the Mystery Plays. Almost everything else (with the exception of the plays of, say, Martin McDonagh and Rolin Jones) has been a total snooze. This haunts me.

We live in the post-ironic age…

All the raw material is gone.

You can't just get a bunch of people to sit in a dark room direct someone to say something to someone else, with 'meaning', and call that theatre anymore, no one cares. Not in the 21st century.

What we must do is orchestrate seismic events of human collision. Create events our dwindling audiences will measure their lives before and after. There must be a crack in the earth's crust running in every direction from the theatre.

How?

Negative space.

• Shakespeare began it by writing word cauldrons of resonant meaning
  that are only complete when a human pronounces them out loud.
• Chekhov continued it by putting important action off-stage, requiring work
  from the audience to connect the pieces together.
• On the lip of the doorway that separates the stage from the greenroom of the
  Beijing Opera House, the artistic management has written, "Feel 10, Act 7."
• When Japanese calligraphers learn their craft, they do not copy characters,
  they copy white space and let the ink take care of itself.
• When the string section switches from bowing to muted plucking, or "pizzicato",
  the gentle thuds indicate the notes our hearts then play.

The answer is this: leave room.

Get out of your own way.

It’s all about what you leave out.

We watch the listener. We fill in the blanks.

We do not go to the theatre to admire an actor have an emotion, we go to have the emotion for ourselves.

I call on all directors to kill all instincts towards self-indulgence. To decimate any need to congratulate our audiences on their bourgeois morality. Theatre is the last to the table in all cultural movements, and we can either euthanize it (which may be the most merciful thing), or yank it headlong into the 21st century. One hundred years ago, the Italian Futurists wanted to burn the libraries and museums. The Constructivists said fuck art for art’s sake, let’s participate in the world!

Then they were all killed.

You are an artist in the dawn of the 21st Century. Are you in this world to participate in the arts? Or are you in the arts to participate in the world?

Let us launch: Operation Pizzicato.

An end to boring, 20th Century, bourgeois-satisfying, self-indulgent, aren’t-my-problems-interesting, me-and-my-family drama.

A beginning to world-defining, master-narrative-decimating, soul-molesting human interface.

Ready?

Go.

Components

Operation Pizzicato is made up of six segments:

1. Getting out of your own way (sample below)
2. Approaching the text (for more on this, click here)
3. Approaching the actors (for more on this, click here)
4. Approaching design
5. Building a world on stage (sample below)
6. Participating in the world through directing

 

Step 1:
Getting Out of Your Own Way, or,
Preoccupation is the Enemy of Art, or,
The Human Slouch Toward Narrative

My first day of directing school I walked into a class room and my professor Liz Diamond sat motionless at a desk. There was music playing, books in front of her and the lights were off. She sat that was for five full minutes, and then said, “what did you see?”

I raised my hand first and said, you’re a substitute teacher and tomorrow you’re teaching a subject you don’t know about.

She said, “what did you see?”

Someone else said “You, last night.”

And she said “what did you SEE?”

And someone said “you at a desk”

And she said “GOOD!”

And explained to us that we had to sever ourselves from the slouch toward narrative, because we are filled with blind spots. From that point forward I’ve noticed narrative everywhere. It is the very blood that pumps through human perception, and there are six layers.

The first step to being a brilliant story teller is grasping the six layers of story that are going on all around you at all times.

 

 

Step 5:
Building a world on stage, or,
Simultaneity vs. Concatenation, or,
Spark Ignition through Friction of the Four Dramatic Elements

This is a system of analyzing a play for the sake of unearthing every possible question you may have yet to ask yourself. It's not a "how to" (none of these are), it's more of "what else?".

It's based on the idea that there are four elements at our disposal as directors: Language, Transaction, Time, and Space. And each of those can be separated into four planes of conflict or tension: a character with themselves (or their own soul), a character with each other character in the play, a character with the world of the play, and the world of the play with the world of the production (current events, geographic location of the production, the audience, what play came before and after it... in short: the zeitgeist).

Within each of these intersections (e.g. conflict between a character and the world of the play in the dimension of language) there are clues or "indicators" to look for in the text to determine where there is friction. One can then use the listed tools to heighten the conflict or friction within one's own production. It is in igniting these "sparks" that makes a production crackle with life and begin to cast a spell on the audience.

Intended Audience

Operation Pizzicato is intended for stage directors, primarily, but film directors have gotten a great deal out of it as well. Operation Pizzicato is open to anyone who has an interest in dramatic storytelling and directing.

Booking Information

If you would like to book Operation Pizzicato at your theatre or university, please contact:

Booking
Operation Pizzicato
4655 Kingswell Avenue, Suite 208
Los Angeles, CA 90027

or call (212) 252-2768
or email booking@operationpizzicato.com