Book summary “Notes on directing”: summary

Introduction

You often face the temptation to overcomplicate theatrical productions with heavy concepts and elaborate staging. This tendency usually masks a lack of clarity about basic mechanics. Frank Hauser and Russell Reich present a clinical and practical framework in Notes on Directing that strips away unnecessary pretension.

The central idea is that a director succeeds not by imposing grand visions, but by managing momentum, casting accurately, and communicating clear physical choices to actors. The book follows the chronological progression of mounting a play. You start by reading the script and casting the right actors. You move through staging, working directly with performers in rehearsal, and maintaining urgency all the way to the final performance.

• How do you read a script without preconceptions?
• What makes casting eighty percent of your job?
• How do you direct actors without giving emotional instructions?

1. Understanding the Script and Casting

You must sit and read through the play completely undisturbed. Take simple notes, and then take a break before reading it a second time.

A director must read the play multiple times without distraction to grasp its core before making decisions.

Uninterrupted reading allows you to visualize the production, potential designs, and actors needed. You discover the compelling question that drives the drama.

• Unplug the telephone, don't answer the door, just sit and read it through.
• At the end make notes or comments, very simple ones.
• Take a break and read it again.
• Think about the look of it, the sort of actors you're going to need, and whether problems are solving themselves.

The director is not the parent of the production. You act as an obstetrician whose primary job is clinical intervention and doing no harm.

The director is not the parent of the production but an obstetrician whose primary job is clinical intervention and doing no harm.

This clinical view keeps you focused on patient intervention when things go wrong. You ensure the production thrives rather than taking over the creation itself. Harold Clurman noted that you are doing well to get sixty percent of what you saw in your head onto the stage.

The Importance of Casting

Some say that casting is ninety percent of directing, while others place it at sixty percent. When placing an actor in a role, you plug the production into the actor's entire life stream. You take responsibility for their individual virtues and vices.

Professional skill and experience should always outweigh finding an amateur who simply looks like the character on the surface.

• Inquire of others about the person to see if she is polite, professional, and responsive.
• Speak with the actor and study the résumé carefully.
• Check if the person has done roles like this before, of this size, style, and level.

2. Building Blocks and Staging

Every scene operates as a chase scene driven by desire and resistance, while physical motion strictly commands audience attention.

Every Scene Is a Chase Scene

Every dramatic scene is fundamentally a chase scene where a character wants something and another resists giving it. Blocking is simply the physical manifestation of characters moving toward their object while the resisting object moves away. The strength of the characters' wants dictates the overall strength of the play.

You must define the core conflict clearly. Work through the central mechanics of the exchange:

• Ask what Character A wants from Character B.
• Determine why Character B refuses to give it.
• Ensure the opposing character actively resists rather than passively listening.

Every actor has a tell, which is a habitual, irrelevant behavior displayed during moments of insecurity or lack of focus. Recognizing an actor's stock postures, repetitive movements, or clichéd gestures serves as a valuable diagnostic indicator that the actor needs guidance back to their task.

Pay close attention to physical habits that signal distress. Look out for specific behavioral indicators:

• Watch for common tells such as knee slapping, repeated tsk sounds, rising up on toes, unnecessary facial scratching, and pleading open-hand gestures.
• Use these behavioral hints as a diagnostic indicator for when intervention is needed.

Controlling Audience Focus

Directors can strictly control where the audience looks by manipulating physical motion and lighting shifts on stage. The human eye naturally follows whatever moves or is newly revealed by motion. When motion is combined with sound, the eye looks in that direction regardless of other events.

Use staging mechanics to manage the room. Apply these techniques to direct attention:

• Put an object in motion to lead the audience's gaze.
• Use a shift in light as a powerful tool to control focus, as it registers to the eye as movement.

3. Talking to Actors

An actor needs concrete physical tasks to perform on stage rather than abstract internal states. You must never give actors undoable emotional directives or express actions in terms of feelings. An actor's feelings remain irrelevant to what needs to be done in the moment.

Direct actors through actionable physical goals rather than emotional directives, and protect their dignity when delivering feedback.

Paul Newman once shared that the best direction he ever received was simply to crowd the guy.

Action Over Emotion

Instead of telling actors to feel a certain emotion, direct them toward an actionable goal or how they want the other person to feel. You can prompt the actor to focus on how he wants the other person to feel instead of demanding an internal reaction.

Characters reveal themselves through their attempts to hide undesirable states or personal failures. This creates a much more layered and truthful performance than playing the state directly. You should have actors play against the given condition by focusing on the effort to conceal their shortcomings.

Jack Lemmon advised that the secret to acting drunk is not to slur, reflecting the character's intense effort to hide their drunkenness.

Apply these steps during rehearsal:

• Avoid giving actors emotional directives such as be disappointed.
• Prompt the actor to focus on how he wants the other person to feel.
• Identify what shameful or undesirable state the character is trying to hide.
• Concentrate on getting every physical action or diction absolutely perfect to betray that hidden effort.

Handling Bad News

People cannot always take harsh truths even when they ask for them. Framing corrections with positive reinforcement helps protect the actor's dignity and keeps them motivated. You must manage criticism carefully, introducing bad news with the word and instead of but.

Provide three times as much good news to temper bad news during critique sessions.

Use these practices when working with your cast:

• Give actors corrective notes in private.
• Introduce bad news with and instead of but.
• Include every single member of the cast in your note sessions to avoid the silence that is taken for disapproval.

4. Rehearsal Techniques and Epilogue

Well-acted scenes can still feel boring if actors behave as though they have endless time, lacking a sense of immediate danger or urgency. Every scene must move as fast as humanly possible against opposing forces like fear or hidden motives.

Forward momentum demands relentless speed and resistance against opposing forces.

Frank Hauser suggests comparing theatrical pacing to Toscanini conducting Brahms' First Symphony as fast as possible while dealing with grinding harmonies.

Use these practices during rehearsals:

• Remind actors of impending outside threats such as someone arriving soon or a train leaving the station.
• Encourage actors to listen to a Toscanini recording of Brahms' First Symphony to understand tension and speed against resistance.

The What Game is an effective rehearsal exercise that forces actors to attach precise meaning and value to every single word they speak. Actors often assume general emotional delivery is enough, letting meaning blur.

The director asks an actor to recite Mary Had A Little Lamb and interrupts constantly to question who Mary is, what had implies, and whether the fleece is springy or dull.

Apply these practices to clarify the text:

• Ask the actor to recite a simple text like Mary Had A Little Lamb.
• Stop the actor whenever a word, pronoun, or action lacks absolute clarity.
• Repeat the process from the beginning until every word carries a specific, unquestionable meaning.

Actors should keep their performances simple and trust the script, as overacting and doing too much creates opportunities for disbelief. John Gielgud offered a single word of advice to young actors: relax.

Employ these practices for natural delivery:

• Tell actors to relax and keep performances simple.
• Encourage actors to watch great performers to notice how little they push and how spare their actions are.

Inserting harsh intensives or breaking internal dialogues into distinct voices helps actors infuse classical soliloquies with genuine anger and conviction. Adding the word fucking to Hamlet's soliloquy lines turns disguised self-pity into real self-disgust.

Utilize these practices for classical texts:

• Temporarily insert strong intensives into rehearsal lines to sharpen images of anger.
• Split interior monologues by explicitly separating the nagging you voice from the defensive I voice.

Duty to the Author

A director's primary duty is to crack the author's code honestly rather than imposing modern concepts or altering texts for the sake of novelty.

Updating classic texts into modern times is viewed as a form of snobbery. The author warns against dragging Medea or Hamlet into modern times. Presenting plays in their original period offers audiences the fascinating and educational experience of time travel across centuries.

Playwrights should generally avoid directing their own work because writing and directing require fundamentally different skill sets. Russell Reich compares a director's role to an obstetrician or midwife rather than a parent.

Perform these practices before production begins:

• Prevent any unauthorized changes to the script.
• Reject conceptual stagings that omit passages or twist intentions for novelty.
• Ask yourself if you have positive reasons to direct beyond not trusting others.
• Establish clear operational rules and communication channels with the director before rehearsals begin if you are a playwright.

Conclusion

Clinical detachment, precise text work, and relentless physical momentum combine to form truthful theatre. You achieve success not through emotional manipulation or grandiose concepts, but through small, practical interventions that keep the action moving forward. The ideas fit together into a single system where the text, the actors, and the staging support one another without unnecessary friction. You must trust the author, protect the performers, and maintain absolute clarity for the audience from the first rehearsal to the final performance.

1. Read the script multiple times without distraction before you make any decisions.
2. Cast the production carefully because casting constitutes the vast majority of your work.
3. Treat every scene as a chase driven by clear desires and immediate obstacles.
4. Give actors actionable physical verbs rather than vague emotional adjectives.
5. Protect the dignity of your performers and deliver criticism privately.
6. Cut the dead wood and maintain relentless momentum across every scene.
7. Preserve the author's original period unless you have a compelling, unifying reason to change it.

10 Key Ideas

1. A director must read the play multiple times without distraction to grasp its core before making decisions.
2. The director is not the parent of the production but an obstetrician whose primary job is clinical intervention and doing no harm.
3. Casting is up to ninety percent of the job because you plug the production into the actor's entire life stream and must prioritize professional skill over surface resemblance.
4. Every scene operates as a chase scene driven by desire and resistance, while physical motion strictly commands audience attention.
5. Recognizing an actor's stock postures, repetitive movements, or clichéd gestures serves as a valuable diagnostic indicator that the actor needs guidance back to their task.
6. Directors can strictly control where the audience looks by manipulating physical motion and lighting shifts on stage.
7. Direct actors through actionable physical goals rather than emotional directives, and protect their dignity when delivering feedback.
8. Characters reveal themselves through their attempts to hide undesirable states or personal failures by playing against the given condition.
9. Forward momentum demands relentless speed and resistance against opposing forces, preventing actors from behaving as though they have endless time.
10. The What Game forces actors to attach precise meaning and value to every single word they speak by questioning text clarity from the beginning.