Today I read an article on Slate.com about
the collegiate effects of Helicopter parenting. Specifically, this article noted that children who's parents were overprotective and over involved have mental health crises in their college years, suffering with lack of motivation, depression, feelings of being overwhelmed, inability to deal with failure etc. The quote that really jumped out at me was this one:
"The data emerging about the mental health of our kids only confirms the harm done by asking so little of them when it comes to life skills yet so much of them when it comes to adhering to the academic plans we’ve made for them."
Little alarm bells went off in my head and suddenly I wasn't just thinking about growing up with parents who are over involved, I began to think about acting in the academy with directors and acting coaches who are over involved. I thought of the idea that, (as I badly paraphrase someone's genius) that the American Actor suffers because too little has been asked of her/him. These two ideas clicked up and linked in my head. So I started to think about this some more, I wondered if there might be a correlation to directors, acting-coaches, who feel very close to the actors and see so clearly once an actor has walked through it, just precisely what it ought to be, could be should be. The benevolent fixers who have positions of authority.
I know the impulse. Having directed bachelor students in a university setting, where I was expected to teach and instruct as well as put on a production, I remember trying desperately to make places for them to make choices and then jumping in when I saw a great choice for them to try. I have observed several professional directors since then and have noticed a trend in directors who are generous and have been actors and who really do want the best for the actors in their productions.
Let's look at a brief example. The director in this scenario, let's imagine them having been an actor themselves [well aware of dictatorial directors who treat actors like shit and wanting to avoid that] and lets imagine them assuring the actor that if they're uncomfortable or don't like it, it can change. The flow of rehearsal goes something like this:
Run through of scene 1x--Actors stumble through, naturally, scripts in hand, first time on their feet. They make some rather bland choices, some fun vocal choices, and move around the stage.
The director, jumps up, "Ok! Good stuff. I really like how you did this and this--it's beautiful. Let's try this, would you put your arm around her here? I think you could turn this like half skip you did into a joke, just take it further. And if we could start it all by entering this way and ending up here--the wander was great, but I think this will make it more specific."
The Actor 1-yeah, that sounds great! Ok! Actor 2-But I'm not sure why I would do this here...
Director--spends 3 minutes discussing the motivation of the character, who they are, their function in the play, and what the mood is to help the actor understand the character better and what the director is seeing/imagining; alternatively, the director acts it out.
Run through of scene again with changes. Actors make this additions, filling them, and the director is ready to move on.
Clearly this is a fictional abbreviation, but what I'm getting at is that the actor is bowled through by the director's choices, even when the director is building on a gesture made by the actor. The director is making choices based on the actors' choices, yes. The director is sensitive to the actor's desires, needs, distress, and even to their impulses. And yet, in this scenario, who did something? Who made choices, who acted? The director.
According to Wikipedia on Today at 4:54pm: Helicopter parenting is defined as follows:
"A helicopter parent (also called a cosseting parent or simply a cosseter) is a parent who pays extremely close attention to a child's or children's experiences and problems, particularly at educational institutions. Helicopter parents are so named because, like helicopters, they hover overhead."
I want to submit that Helicopter directors are those who pay extremely close attention to the actor's experiences and problems, who want to make sure the actor feels cared for and succeeds in the process to create a performance. These directors--as I have seen them--tend to turn out excellent shows. They have a good eye and can navigate the possible actions of an action with ease. They are also overworked and emotionally strained.
This director is essentially playing all the parts in their head and working out as many possibilities as possible during a short rehearsal process. They are emotionally strained because they are so closely following, monitoring their actor's emotional states.
Their actors are also dependent on them. As friendly as this rehearsal process is, as much as it works with what the actor does, this process does not encourage active actor artistry except within the defined vision of what comes from the director's head. It doesn't ask anything of the actor--inherently. An actor can show up to this rehearsal having only tried to memorize theirs lines and thought about the emotional text of the play and can be directed through the process with ease.
I once had a director, the play was As You Like It, one of the actresses asked what she should do at a given point. The director replied that the actress should make a choice. Then she said, "Don't make me take your choice away like you're less than a child. Even my child actors make their own choices."
Taking actors who have had helicopter directoring into a process in which they are asked to make decisions based NOT on "directorial rightness" but rather on what the actor wants to do [which after all is the basic function of theatre--What the Actor Does] turns the actors into sullen, fearful, and paralyzed performers. They've been working with directors who have taken their artistic responsibility from them:
How do I know if it's right?
My impulses are always wrong.
I don't know what to do.
What should I do here?
What do you want me to do?
These questions and statements are all a symptom of having had the responsibility of artistic creation lifted from their shoulders and fed to them by the often loving and concerned hands of acting coaches and directors who are anxious for these actors to succeed. The above questions can lead to serious existential crises when the support structure is removed. I spoke to an actor today who reminisced that she hadn't been in school for years and missed having people tell her how to make acting choices, tell her when it was good and wasn't, tell her how to improve.
"Karen Able is a staff psychologist at a large public university in the Midwest. (Her name has been changed here because of the sensitive nature of her work.) Based on her clinical experience, Able says, “Overinvolved parenting is taking a serious toll on the psychological well-being of college students who can’t negotiate a balance between consulting with parents and independent decision-making.”"
This hit me like a ton of bricks: as an actor (as I am now) what is the difference between consulting the director and making my own artistic decisions? Where is the line between the director being a painter who uses glow paints [metaphor: the glow being the actor's ability to light up the frame work of the director's choices] and a collaborator who is genuinely working with actors who bring more than their bodies to the table?
I find these questions really fascinating. Especially because being an independent artist who works in collaboration is important to me. I have only recently begun to place the locus of my choices and my measurements of success in my own knowledge and power. I once had a director say of me "She's an actress who needs a firm male director to get the best out of her." This statement seems insultingly erroneous! That an actor just needs the write director to make them good.
I struggle with this because I also see the directorial role as a facilitator of communication and collaboration. I want the director to be able to be the captain who steers the ship but also to be able to trust the actors to make their own choices. When actors don't make their own choices it's easy to become frustrated by the process because, come on! It's easy when you get ideas and see what might be to jump in and give it; it's hard to give up the control of making it one thing when it could be anything.
This is not to say that all actors or all kind directors fall into these traps. It is to say that I am a director who has been frustrated by actors who bring just themselves to rehearsal. It is to say that as an actor, I have been deer-in-the-headlights in response to directors asking me "what do you want to do here? What do you think this looks like?" It is to say that I am tired of fear, confusion, and self-distrust in myself and other actors who are afraid that the director will tell them its wrong--not because they are afraid to be wrong but because they don't think they know what's right.
And I wonder, if we can't find some way to give actors back the responsibility of doing things and making things happen. Can we re-unlock the permission to make dangerous choices in safe spaces? And how much safety is too much?
