Posted by Sarah E. Farbo.

Last year I directed my first full-length play.  It was intense, to say the least.  Having a love of theatre since a very young age (yes, you can find slides of me forcing my brother to play dress-up with me and tapes of stories that I made up), I always connected with that magical world.  And, getting a chance to become involved with 11:11 has only allowed my passion to bloom more fully.  I love acting, but I have to say that directing kindles a deeper flame within me.

As a director, I was in charge of it all.  While insanely thrilling, it was also enervating!  I had to plan every rehearsal? I had to understand the meaning and purpose of the play, not to mention a broad grasp of the characters so that I could guide the actors well? I had to direct the lighting designer? I had to make sure we had a set, props, costumes? Oh, and I still had get up in time to make it to my day job everyday at 9 a.m.? Know what I learned? Confidence is everything!

Well, that, and being mentored by the awesome Brian Tuttle, crying a few times, shouting a few times (never at anyone involved in the play, of course)—all these things helped to keep the process moving.  My learning curve was sharp and steep and if I had to do it all over again I would in a heartbeat.

One of the most interesting things that I learned during the process was that finding the right language in which to communicate to the actors is everything.  This is a life lesson that I feel I relearn every year of my life… finding a way to express my vision, my ideas, parts of my very self. It's a constant dance.  What appeared so simple in my mind turned into a bumbling monster when I tried to explain it.  Then I tried to fish around in my (limited, it became apparent) vocabulary to find another, better word to get across what I was trying to say.  What I didn’t realize prior to directing, and what seems strikingly obvious now, is that what works for one actor isn’t necessarily going to work for another actor.  Many nights after rehearsals were spent trying to figure out what made each actor truly tick—what I did that night that made her face light up with that "Aha, I get it" moment, or that "I understand the path I’m on and I’m going to go for it" moment.

I found myself jotting down "Actor A learns best when I have her get physical first," or "Actor B needs to journal for awhile before entering the world."  It was a lesson in both leadership and relationships.  And if you know me at all, you know I adore intimacy. What I crave in life is to really get to know other people—I want to know what they think about before they fall asleep, what thoughts cross their minds as they ride the #66 bus, and how they define living.  Through directing, I am able to get in there with my actors—and for a short amount of time we become a community that is almost suspended in time.  We figure out all of those wonderful intimacies that occur in the world of a play.

On a final note, restraint is highly valuable while directing.  I do a lot of photography and one thing I have learned is the art of restraint. In this era of digital cameras, it is easy to snap a billion and one photographs just like that.  It’s much harder to hold back and to pre-visualize the shot you would like in your mind and work from there. That takes time, patience, and dedication.  Such is true in directing.  There were many a night when I had to visualize the whole world of the play as focused photographs that needed to happen to move the story forward.  It took a certain re-training of my neuron pathways to get into this mode.  It was wonderfully fun and hard to both envision the whole world of the play and to focus in on what would work for each actor to bring the story and the world together.  So, do I have it all figured out for the next play I’m directing in March? Hell no! But I’ve got a giant notebook full of notes, a passion for learning, and a love for the stories that lie deep inside every person.