The Director shook my hand, in a 'welcome to the club' sort of way, and we sat down together.
Already it felt wrong. He didn't ooze authority, he seemed friendly. Where was his ambition? I showed him through my work, and he commented languidly, as though waiting for the payoff. He is a director at the state theatre company. Where was his plaguing sense of doubt? Where was his arrogance? Was he even really a director?
I paused on one image that I liked particularly - of myself, wild hair, exhausted-looking face, in the middle of giving an instruction. That's my director shot, I said. He laughed, and his eyes twinkled with mischievous glee. It was a sort of gentle, mocking laugh - I felt the butt of some joke, but for some reason, I didn't mind.
Had I seen this show? Yes - I got tickets from the company. Didn't use the secret usher's handshake? His eyes lit up again. This time, I chuckled as well.
Of the three assistant directors, I was the only one to show up. I was there every day, from 10.00 sharp - ready to listen, ready to soak in the events of the rehearsal room. I was still somehow a kid from the bush, directing another show and working two jobs at the same time, so I projected a kind of pressurised, burning concentration. The Director seemed sometimes alarmed at how relaxed I wasn't. In exchange, I watched on in horror as he appeared to amble through our first reading, mumbling out some suggestions to the actors.
And yet it was interesting - I noticed the actors seemed very 'together'. They made suggestions - not demands. They spoke only when they really had something to say. Sometimes they made jokes. And they really listened, not desperately but carefully - to each other, to the Director. Over the first two hours, these silent agreements formed - they built up in the air of the room, hovering over us, a library ready to be drawn from later. Over the rehearsal period, these became the play.
Generously, the Director tried to find a place for my vaulting ambition. Once, I had a conversation with him about Hitchcock. The next day, it came up in discussion in the rehearsal room. Here's your Hitchcock man, said the Director. I looked at him, not understanding.
Even for a rehearsal room, there were many lessons. Do you guys ever read something other than plays? asked the actor one day. I realised how full of knowledge she was - I thought of the small offerings she had made throughout the rehearsal process, drawn from stories, drawn from life. No, we both replied. For me, it was a lie - even more so today.
My father died yesterday, the Director said. It sounded strange because he said it in his usual, suggestive way, offering the information rather than announcing it. I'm sorry to hear, I replied. Let me know what I can do to help. I caught the Director as we broke from the tech rehearsal, on his way to lunch.
Where were you thinking of going?
I was just going to get some Hungry Jacks or something.
Come with me.
I led the Director into the food court of Southbank and we got some Indian food from a bain marie, probably only slightly more nutritious than Hungry Jacks. We ate and said little.
Simon will probably take rehearsals, he said. OK, I replied, dejected. Why not me? The words came burning at me, and I didn't say them. I thought about them, though. Why bring in someone from the outside? Why not your assistant, who has been diligently sitting through rehearsals for 6 weeks? Doesn't he trust me? What was this lesson, exactly?
Later we laughed over a beer, and the Director told me about ambition. He asked me if I knew a famous actor, I said I did. And then he said She was drinking here after a show of August: Osage County, where she gave an imperial performance, dwarfed only by the extravagant set. A man in a suit, who had been a member of the audience, came up to her and said 'Great performance! Don't quit your day job though!' She glared at the man, and then went directly up to him, pressing her face close to his, pointing at his nose, and said in this kind of spitting, threatening tone: 'Don't say that. Don't you EVER say that'. And the man apologised and whimpered away. The Director chuckled.
After opening night, I never was in contact with the him again. Somehow, I thought he would never understand me.
And so he never knew, actually, the lessons I took from him.
~
Vale Aidan Fennessy
a director who taught me about real ambition.
I was Assistant Director to Aidan on Boston Marriage with Melbourne Theatre Company in 2010.
~
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