Directing Observership: Learning through Observation—In the Rehearsal Room with Tony Award–winning Director Kathleen Marshall

The creative work of artists developed in the rehearsal room is sacred—a collective theatre/music/dance hive-mind coming together to create theatre. The creative space must be carefully protected so that artists remain free to experiment, explore, fail, and triumph without fear of judgment. With these ideas in mind, I hope to share with you some of my observations from the rehearsal room of the musical My Paris that was in development by Goodspeed Musicals during the summer of 2015.

This journey began more than five years before when I received emails and flyers from Good-speed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut, advertising an "Observership Opportunity," where an early career director could join the Goodspeed team for a show and "learn while observing." From my early days in New York City auditioning for and performing in musicals during the late 1980s through the 1990s, I knew what a transformative learning experience the rehearsal room could be, especially with a creative team and performers who were working at the highest level of the industry. But my personal experience in commercial theatre to date only afforded the opportunity given a professional actor in the rehearsal space. So, as a relatively new stage director (since 2004), I longed for the opportunity to observe and learn from an accomplished, respected, and established director. With such an experience, could I expand my directing skills? Develop my ability to express a play or musical visually, aurally, physically, and technically? Could I learn what skills and attributes an established director possessed that makes that director effective? And finally, was I modeling effectively to my students, according to current processes relevant in the commercial theatre arena? Those questions and others compelled me to apply for the Goodspeed Musicals Observership Program. Thus I found myself in mid-life, as an early to mid-career director, in the quiet village of East Haddam on a morning in late June 2015 for "Bagelrama," the opening breakfast ceremony launching development rehearsals for a new musical about Toulouse-Lautrec titled My Paris.

It Takes a Village—and a Dream Team

Assembled on that first morning were the entire Goodspeed Musicals' executive and production staff, apprentices, interns, and even some volunteer staff. Also in attendance were the creative team, production staff/apprentices/interns specifically in residence for the production. The large rehearsal room was filled to capacity. The My Paris musical theatre "dream team" boasted Tony Award–winning director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall, a libretto by Tony-, Emmy-, and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Alfred Uhry, music by award-winning Armenian French singer-songwriter and author of London's West End version Lautrec Charles Aznavour, English lyrics and arrangements by Tony Award–winning composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown, and music supervision and orchestration by David Chase, who most recently music directed television's The Sound of Music Live! This impressive team was joined by a cast of fourteen high-profile Broadway performers (fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Goodspeed Musicals My Paris creative team: Alfred Uhry and Kathleen Marshall (front) with David Gardos and David Chase (back). (Photo: Diane Sobolewski.)

The prospect of an observership with Marshall was both exciting and daunting. Before my arrival I read multiple articles regarding her directing style and philosophy in an effort to educate myself on her work as a director, since my observership did not involve direct interaction with the director or production—only a seat in the room. Through my research I learned that she came to directing through the world of choreography, beginning as an assistant to her brother, Rob Marshall, in such shows as Kiss of a Spider Woman and She Loves Me, both in 1993. In several written and video interviews Marshall talked about the importance of mentoring through assistantships and observerships. In Victoria Myers's Women and Hollywood blog she asks Marshall, "what's something you think people can do to improve gender parity in theatre?" To which her interlocutor responded, "I think that one of our responsibilities as women working in theatre...