It’s been a while. Let’s get caught up!
In September, I had the opportunity to co-facilitate an exciting new initiative with One World Theatre, the theatre company I work with here in Kathmandu. With two other colleagues, we developed a three-week program titled The Incubator Series, which was an opportunity for theatre directors to try out production ideas in a low-stakes, high-creativity environment. While this series was not directly related to my Fulbright research, it was an exciting opportunity to work with my affiliate organization to address a gap we see in the theatre community here (and everywhere, to be honest). As in most areas of life, theatre is something one learns by doing. For actors and technical/design workers, it is a bit easier to gain experience and learn in low-stakes settings – you simply join a production that is already happening, or even take classes if they are available. But for directors, it can be more challenging to find opportunities to learn and develop the craft of directing; for one, you need other people to be able to direct. Moreover, directing is truly a leadership position, meaning if someone is looking to hire a director for a project, they are likely not going to hire someone with little or no experience. If you really want to direct, you can find ways to do it, but the barriers are much greater than in other areas of theatre.
And so, with this in mind, the three of us decided to organize a program that would give this opportunity to people who might be interested in directing but hadn’t yet gotten the chance. With the three of us also being directors, we thought this could also be an opportunity for us to experiment with ideas too.
We developed an application form and started spreading the word. Questions and ideas from prospective participants started rolling in, with each one more surprising than the last. We had asked the applicants to propose what script they would like to direct, but we decided to leave it open to any kind of text or concept – theatrical, non-theatrical, non-story, movement-based. Anything goes, as long as you can justify your concept and explain your approach.
Well. We received not one, not two, but five film scripts (this is a theatre project, mind you). Four of those scripts were akin to horror or action flicks, and one of them required a giant tractor as the main set piece, but only in the first scene so it would have to be removed halfway through (this is a super-low-budget project, mind you). Nearly all of the young, upcoming theatre folks that we were sure would apply declined to submit because of other commitments – but we did receive several applications from India and greater Nepal (this is a Kathmandu-based project, mind you). To say we were surprised by the exact turnout of applications would be an understatement!
There were, of course, several applications that fit the criteria quite nicely, and overall we were really pleased by the positive (if baffling) response to this project. We gave constructive feedback to a few of the applicants and asked for revised application submissions, and from there we chose the finalists. Originally, we had planned a four-week program, but with the submissions we’d received and various scheduling conflicts, we decided to keep it to three weeks and just grant opportunities to applicants who really seemed up to the task. With the exception of the applicant from India, we brought all the young directors together to show them the space and have some brief sessions on how to hold auditions and tips on how to approach directing.
With that, it was time to begin. The Week 1 auditions had an overwhelming turnout of actors, new and experienced, young and old, all coming to be brave and vulnerable in front of the directors. There were three directors for that week: myself, another Incubator organizer, and an applicant. (We had decided to have both of us organizers direct the first week, thinking it would be easier to manage everything smoothly with us two directing. We had never done such a project before and really had no idea how it would turn out, and somehow it seemed like a good idea to have us be the guinea pigs. In retrospect, I think we would probably do it differently!) Each of us had very different approaches to our audition processes, so with the huge amount of actors who showed up and the imbalanced use of time and space, auditions took quite a bit longer than we expected. Also, though we had informed the actors they needed to pre-register and that everyone would be expected right at 10am, very few people followed these instructions. We even had folks calling us at 3pm to ask if they could come and audition! (We told them to come back the next week.)
Tired and hungry, we three directors and the kind volunteers who had helped us manage the endless stream of actors headed to a nearby cafe to discuss casting and scheduling. Over plates of momo and cups of chiya, we managed to agree on who would work with which actors and who would get which rehearsal slot.
The next morning, rehearsals started in full swing. For my piece, I had decided to adapt a chapter from Salman Rushdie’s Haroun & the Sea of Stories, a beautiful fairy tale novel about a boy who embarks on a magical journey to help his storytelling father retrieve his voice. It has been a long-time dream of mine to adapt this book into a play, but I always imagined that this particular chapter would not make it into the final script because it’s not so crucial to the plot. However, after working with these extraordinarily gung-ho twelve actors, I might have to change my mind. The chapter we performed is called “The Mail Coach,” and it covers the haphazard, bumpy journey Haroun and his father Rashid take over the mountains and into the Valley of K. The bus driver, Butt, speeds and careens the vehicle full of frightened passengers along high cliff edges, around hairpin bends, into icy high-altitude patches. Although the story is slightly exaggerated, everyone in Nepal has experienced some version of this bus ride. So even though many of the actors I worked with don’t feel comfortable in English, and even though my Nepali is not anywhere near fluent, we all understood exactly what situation we were dealing with. Lots of laughs over shared memories of being cramped, of bags falling from overhead, of that one passenger in the back who has to vomit out the window.
I am really grateful to the folks who joined me for “The Mail Coach.” Many of them had very little acting experience and found my Nepali difficult to understand, but everyone showed up for our hectic one week of rehearsal and put in all their good vibes and hard work to make the play happen. Within hours of meeting each other, everyone had become friends – sharing food, holding one another accountable to the schedule, helping translate and explain concepts so we could all be understood. And that, folks, is one of my favorite things about making theatre. It wasn’t so bad seeing the audience cry with laughter, either!
You can watch the video here:
The first week of The Incubator Series was a huge success. We had three times the expected audience turnout, with many people standing because there simply weren’t enough cushions to go around. All three plays were comedies too, and I believe we need more laughter these days. At the end of the evening, we also had a brief talkback panel to discuss the directors’ creative choices, which turned out to be a rich opportunity for the audience to engage with the artists. Overall, we were all extremely pleased with ourselves.
And with that, we dove into the second and third weeks. Because we were working with entirely new actors, directors, scripts, and volunteers, I wouldn’t say the following weeks were necessarily smoother – but we did have a better handle on the tasks ahead of us. Our second week featured (unintentionally) a selection of four plays that dealt with existential questions, one of which I acted in. The third week was loosely themed around death (again, unintentionally), and featured a recorded play sent from South India that we projected onto the wall. Though it was less successful to have a recording of a play (theatre really is meant to be experienced live), it was still quite interesting to have the South Indian theatre troupe join our talkback session via Zoom.
In follow-up conversations after the intensely busy month of The Incubator Series, we three organizers have come away with a few lessons learned. The first lesson: the reason we had so many submissions of film scripts and so many actors showing up thinking they were auditioning for a film or TV show? Because we put “Series” in the title. All three of us organizers have lived and worked in Nepal for many years, but none of us are Nepali – which means none of us made the connection that the word “series” only means web-series or TV-series to Nepali people. We all think of that word as meaning something that happens serially, but Nepali folks have a different understanding.
The second lesson: no more new scripts. It’s one thing to incubate directors – it’s a totally different thing to incubate scripts and writing, and none of us are qualified to do that. We would love to host a writing Incubator someday, but it ought not to be the same project as the directing Incubator.
The third lesson: lots more hands-on guidance and intensive training for the directors. While the best way to learn directing is really just to direct, we all wished we had been more present and active in supporting the inexperienced directors throughout their week of rehearsal.
The fourth lesson: do this project again! It was so, so rewarding for all of us – organizers, directors, actors, volunteers, audience. Kathmandu has a surprising amount of theatre for a relatively small city, and One World Theatre is very much an active part of that scene, but we really loved the chance to offer something quite different from the standard commercial production while connecting with new artists and new audiences.
There you have it. A summary of what kept me from posting all of September. Stay tuned next week to hear what kept me from posting all of October!
PS - Here are a few photos from the piece I directed in Week 3, a two-scene selection from David Henry Hwang's The Sound of a Voice.
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