Zelda Fichandler Interview
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Zelda Fichandler
My work:
The Public Bosom (before The Arena Stage)
She Stoops To Conquer
Our Town
Inherit The Wind
The Great White Hope
Indians
Moonchildren
Pueblo
A History of the American Film
The Madness of God
Women and Water
Enrico IV
The Crucible
The Three Sisters
Death of a Salesman
Six Characters in Search of an Author
The Ascent of Mt. Fuji
в? What kind of theater most interests you?
I think I am an Arena style director. Obviously I founded The Arena Stage in Washington D.C. with this preference in mind. I find though that the same principles of collision and withdrawal apply on a proscenium as they do in an arena. I believe most human action is organized in terms of forces of attraction and repulsion. It is essentially a form that choreographs the psychology of motion; the meaning and needs become visible.
в? What’s the most important aspect of the preparation for you?
To me the greatest mystery of the world is knowing about oneself and the heart of a person sitting at a foot’s distance. That distance is enormous. The theatre aims to know that heart, to cross that space. To reach this place I find the “zamissel”. This is a Russian word. It means “the pervading sense”. I spend a lot of time on the design of the space when the psychological pulls are related to place. I prefer intensive study and preparation. I work for months looking for the exact zamissel or idea or super-objective, if you will, that explains every action, every breath, every pulse, and every second of the life of the play and unlocks its hidden conflict. This knowledge releases my imagination. I believe imagination is too thin, or lacking in strength and too fragile to build on without knowledge.
в? Which element of a production most interests you — i.e. acting, writing, design etc?
It is such a bonus if designers know how to analyze a text almost as well as a director. And what a bonanza if a director knows how to design a set. It is really all about collaborating, co-laboring, in order to express a collective consciousness — the fundamental act of making theatre. I have worked with remarkable designers such as Doug Stein and he is the most investigative designer I have ever worked with. His designs are exactly right because he postpones putting pencil to paper until he felt it was perfect. As I view art, the actor is at the center, however, because the revelation of human behavior and its meaning is what the art is about.
в? What kind of text appeals to you?
The words on the page are only clues to the life boiling underneath them. I have to know what I want to find out when I choose a play. It doesn’t matter in terms of form or text how the information is provided. I will do any play, as long as I am compelled to go from the known to the unknown and then back again to the known, for then, what was the unknown is now more known.
в? How important is music to your work?
I love music in the theatre, but I am not much for underscoring in the film sense. I feel there is the text and there is the subtext, which is the feeling and thought of the actors. Underscoring either describes or contradicts. I think neither is right. Music must be very carefully selected.
в? Who is your ideal audience?
Anyone at all. It only takes the transformation of two people to change a whole civilization! All workers in the theatre, all of us, need to be aware of the purposes of our work, why and for whom it is being done and what emotional, political and social reverberations are in the air that can release that awareness. I am very in tune with what people are thinking about even though they can’t name it. We have to address the subconscious or the preconscious of our audience, we have to be of them, but we have to be inside of them as well. They are we. People experience their lives as a tale and the theatre is a natural place for the telling of tales. Theatre and living are inextricably linked.
в? What do you do on your first day of rehearsal?
After the actors and I have done our six months or so, of dramaturgy and research, I start off talking about what I have come to feel in central to this experience and about the means we’ll use to reveal that center. We talk about the zamissel for as long as the actors want. Then we read to discover everything we can for a week or ten days.
Then I move into improvisations and then back to reading. I will bring in a box of props, chairs and tables to stimulate thinking and someone will wander from the reading table and then someone will get up with them and so on. I will then score the work, set the rhythms, but always leave elasticity, room for new discover, or the production is dead. What I aim for, in the end, is improvisation within set form.
в? How long do you like to rehearse for?
It is not the number of hours. Rather than rehearse for twelve hours a day in one week, it’s better to do it for four hours a day over three weeks. That has to do with the material getting into the muscle and nervous system from the subconscious. One needs time to acquire instinctive knowledge and to embody that knowledge in a series of creative images. Of course the more complex the work, the more time one needs. I can be fairly comfortable with six or seven weeks for a Chekhov production for instance.
в? What are the biggest