![]() ![]() Through the panes can be seen part of a veranda outside, and trees covered with autumn foliage.” In the opposite wall, on the left, a glass door, also with curtains drawn back. In the right-hand wall of the front room, a folding door leading out to the hall. “In the back, a wide doorway with curtains drawn back, leading into a smaller room decorated in the same style as the drawing-room. The opening stage directions to Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler looks like this: All the same, many actors and directors favour P and OP as they eliminate the sometimes-confusion of having to clarify which person’s left or right is being spoken about. Prompt corners are still common features in modern theatres, although their placement to stage-left is not always guaranteed. More a staple in British theatre, they refer to the “prompt corner” traditionally occupied by the stage manager to the left side of the stage-a nook where actor’s could be safely prompted if they forgot their place in a play. One important variation of this convention is the use of “prompt side” (P) and “opposite prompt (side)” (OP), which are alternate names for stage-left and stage-right. So now when you read the stage directions from Look Back in Anger by John Osborne and read the following in Act 1: “(He walks C., behind Cliff, and stands, looking down at his head.)”, you know that you have to move from where you finished you last line to centre stage and peer down at the other actor sitting in the chair! Easy, right? It can be a little confusing at first, but with practice it becomes second nature. Left and right correspond to the actor looking out at the audience. They are always given from the actors perspective-upstage being towards the back of the auditorium and downstage towards the audience. These are actual terms used in the theatre to describe the various positions on the stage. ![]() You may have heard of the idea of “stage left” or “centre stage”. By learning the different types of stage directions, you’ll get a better sense of what the author was trying to convey in writing them down, and how they may help you in your performance. Sometimes, they’ll be of more use to the director, design team or the dramaturg. One thing to keep in mind is that while you’ll likely read every word written down in the script, not all stage directions may be relevant to you directly. Other times, it’s more descriptive of the world of the play, allowing you to conduct analysis as to how you might bring words off the page and into life. Sometimes, it’s purely for the ease of blocking a scene-working out where the actors stand and how they’ll move around the space. Types of Stage Directionsĭifferent types of stage directions will give you different types of information. Tennessee Williams, on the other hand, was incredibly descriptive, outrageously prescriptive and wrote genuine essay-length stage directions! Each writer has their own style, and it is your job as the actor to know what these instructions mean and how to make them work for you on stage. Shakespeare was famously very light on the stage directions, his only credited one is ‘Exit stage left, pursued by a bear’! This is because he was acting in or directing his own pieces and didn’t need to write down the stage directions. They also give you an insight into the playwright and how they approach their work. Stage directions give you vital information for the action and relationships between people, things and places inside a text. It is the stage directions that tell you what a character looks like, where they travel in the space and what the space looks and sounds like. ![]() Stage directions are instructions in a play for technical aspects of the production, such as lighting, sound, costume, scenery or props and, most importantly, the movement of actors onstage. What are these italicised commands? And how can you, as an aspiring actor, make sense of them? Separate the wheat from the chaff? The Tenessee Williams from Eugene Ionesco? The answers are contained below, so read on to uncover the mysteries and intricacies of stage directions in theatrical productions! You open a play to page one, and the first thing that comes tearing at you is a whole swathe of italics, a writer ranting at you about the lighting in Brooklyn in the summer of ’73, in-depth descriptions of a library or simply “They cross the Andes”: the indomitable OG of wild stage directions from Peter Shaffer’s 1964 play The Royal Hunt of the Sun. ![]()
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