Katie Mitchell Podcast

Today we listened to a podcast that director, Katie Mitchell, was on. Before listening to the podcast I knew very little about Katie and her directing process. I found it interesting to learn about her directing style and how she views directing in general. I don’t think I fully understood how many details a director needs to be aware of to be to create a precise replication of human behavior. Katie asks her actors introspective questions about physical actions such as, “Why? What is your environment? Motivations? Time? Place? Past and future?”. These are the questions that directors should be asking their actors and that actors should be asking themselves in order to create a full and true backstory to their character. This will help to shape their intentions and thought processes while acting. Additionally Katie discusses character relationships and how she and her actors work to identify the thought patterns a character would have about the other characters. This leads to more realistic character relationships and said relationships determine present and future behavior. She talked about the ‘backstory’ to a character(s) in a way I had never thought about before. She said that directors should look at the past situations that may be directly or indirectly related to the play, but that it all fuels the present action. Everything matters and everything before goes to affect the present moment. After Katie Mitchell discussed how she helps to fully develop the characters, their relationships, and backstories, she dived into the details that go into a play and how it all works together to immerse the audience into the story. She talked about how she pays attention to even small details, such as the weather. She said that actors reflecting the weather in little ways, such as fanning themselves if it’s hot or a little shiver if it is cold, add to the truthfulness of the play. All of these little pieces are brought together to create the world the story is told in, it creates believability.

I found this podcast very interesting, it helped me to think more critically about different scenes I have watched. It also helped me to think more in depth about my moments of theater in Criterion D of my Director’s Notebook. I think that hearing how no detail is too small really allowed me the freedom to think outside of the box for how I can stage my moments of theater. The most important thing I learned from this podcast was the importance of having confidence in your ideas and the confidence to follow through with them. I think that when directing, if you don’t even have confidence in your ideas, your actors won’t either.