What does an Artistic Director of a theatre company do?
28 May 2010
Meet Colin McColl, our AD.
Colin McColl heads up Auckland Theatre Company. He is one of New Zealand’s leading theatre directors. It’s likely he’s directed some of your favourite ATC works over the last few years. You can read a bit more about him here. At the moment he is preparing for the TelstraClear season of STEPPING OUT which he is directing, and trying to programme a season of work for next year. He is involved in every facet of the Company’s operation. This is what an Artistic Director of a theatre company does.
Somewhere in amongst this, he took the time to answer a few questions…
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m busy rehearsing STEPPING OUT and and dealing with moving between rehearsal rooms and dance studios so we don’t disrupt the retailers below us with the sound of tap dancing coming through the ceiling. The process of creating a theatre piece is, for the most part, a noisy messy process, but having to move rehearsal spaces can upset the rhythm and the dynamic of the process for actors and director alike.
I usually work with the actors until early afternoon. They then have three hours tapping with choreographer Sandra Rasmussen; learning the routines and then unlearning them so they can perform them as though they have two left feet early on in the play! The challenge is to recreate the flavour of an actual weekly tap dancing class. Because Sandra also plays the role of the tap teacher Mavis in STEPPING OUT, rehearsals can sometimes get confusing as to whether Sandra is giving dance direction to the actors or the characters. As we are in the final weeks of rehearsals for STEPPING OUT there are also lots of decisions to be made about music, lighting and costuming.
Read the full blog entry here
