So, a few days ago, you were sitting in an audition and you realized, “Hey, I’ve been acting for a while; I know how most of this stuff works. I could be a director, because, man I so wouldn’t let that bimbo keep reading no matter how hot she is.” Well, guess what, fictional actor I just invented, you totally can be a director, because directing is so much easier than acting.

Directors never have to get up in front of people…except before the show, when they are often required to make theatre announcements…and during intermission and after the show, when they are expected to schmooze with the audience–especially season ticket holders and big donors…and at every single rehearsal and at auditions…you know what, scratch that.

I kid. I’m sure everyone who’s ever sat through a show or seen a director work and thought, “I can do that,” has quickly realized (on further thought) that directing is hard work, and not for the faint at heart. That doesn’t mean that you can’t or that you shouldn’t. Directing is incredibly rewarding work; it’s a different payoff than acting, but the payoff is huge, anyway.

Directors don’t get the full rush of the audience’s responses; that “Holy cats, they really like me,” moment is reserved for actors. They do, however, get a small piece of every response. When the audience laughs at a joke, or cries out at a scare, or goes dead silent for a deep and heartfelt soliloquy, the director gets a tiny piece of that, and all those tiny pieces add up over all.

A good director doesn’t even need that percentage-off-the-top of audience-love, because he has the satisfaction of knowing that he tied a bunch of performances together into a show, and that is immensely satisfying (it’s also crushing to realize that you failed in that regard). From auditions, through rehearsal, to the final curtain, the greatest joy of directing is translating another person’s words into a world that can only exist on your stage. That’s the ultimate joy of directing.

It does come at a cost, however. Directing is stressful in ways actors never have to think about. A good director has a working knowledge, not only of acting and the script, but of costuming, lighting and sound, and property and set design. A director needs to understand the story and the world created by the script on a level deep enough to assist the actors in properly portraying their characters. And the director is the last person applauded when everything goes right, and the first one condemned when anything goes wrong.

So, I’m going to cough up some hairballs of wisdom for beginning directors, too. I mean, why should actors be the only ones forced to listen to an old man ramble about the way things should be done. Of course, I emphasize that these small pearls only apply to small theatre. I’ve never worked in a large theater, or even one that was allowed to award Equity points, and I fully understand that the difference between the theatres I’ve worked and professional theatres is as huge a gulf as that between professional baseball and beer-league softball.

So watch this space. You might learn something. I’m pretty sure I have.

A few months ago, I posted some advice to actors on my Facebook. I called them “Directors’ Secret Hints for Auditions,” or something like that. They were, over all, fairly well received. In the weeks since, it occurs to me that maybe I haven’t done enough, so I’ve created a new blog category called “Director’s Notes.” In the Director’s Notes, I’m going to dole out the pearls of wisdom I have gathered over 20-odd years on and behind the stage.

Mind you, I am an amateur, and my experience is on the amateur stage. Professional directors play a different game and have different rules and expectations. Don’t walk away thinking I’ve given you the keys to the Winter Garden, because I haven’t. Hell, even other amateur directors will probably have different needs than I do. I guess what I’m saying here, is that this is my opinion, and while I’m trying to add in what I’ve observed as an actor or set monkey, as well, ultimately, every director rules their own stage, and if it comes down to a conflict between what I write here and what they say there, they win.

That being said, let’s start this little odyssey at the beginning with

Your Résumé

Vital Data

The top third of your résumé should be filled with the sort of information that directors need to make their decisions.

Your Photo  The upper-right corner should display a 2″ by 3″ photo of you that is clear and recent enough that you will be instantly recognizable (including your current hair length and color). Don’t worry, most publicly-available printers can handle that level of detail. You could pop for the 8 x 12 on the back, but, unless you’re serious about making the jump to professional, that’s a lot of money for a photo the director probably isn’t going to look at.

Your Name This should be pretty large (I suggest 18-24 point type) and in bold. Your name and current appearance are the most important pieces of information you can include on an amateur theatre résumé, and they should both be right there where the director is looking, If he has to hunt around for too long to find out who just made his heart stop in that three-minute reading from Da, he’ll forget how amazing you are and move on to someone else.

Your Contact Information Nobody wants your address. With very few exceptions, the only reason any director cares where you live is if you’ve volunteered to host the closing party.

What they do need is you primary phone number. Unless you’re a luddite like me, that’ll be a cell phone. If you have one, you may want to include a secondary phone number where a message can reach you. Don’t use your work number.

You’ll also want to include a reliable e-mail account. Unless you want to send friend requests to everyone too drunk to say, “no,” when the AD showed up with scripts, this will be the main non-voice contact between you and the director. I advise having an e-mail separate from both your work e-mail and your main personal e-mail. There are plenty of free hosts out there where you can do this.

Your Description Why describe yourself? because there is information a director needs that can’t always be conveyed by your photo. He’ll use this info for a wide variety of decisions (or reminders of decisions he made when he saw you on his stage). This is an objective description, so it’s easiest to keep to quantifiable facts.

I want to say your race isn’t that important, but it can be, if the script calls for a certain race and that isn’t immediately apparent in your photo. Use your best judgment; if someone gets mad because you did or didn’t include your race in a description of yourself, then they’re the one with a problem. Your sex is necessary, however, and is not always easy to discern by a photo (or even a casual live glance).

You must include your age. I mean your actual—right now—age. Don’t tell him what age you “look” or what ages you “can play,” because, I can tell you right now that you’re wrong. Just give them your correct age and let them decide whether you’re Willy or Biff Loman.

By the same token, your current height and weight are also essential. I am 5’9″ and 240 pounds, and no amount of wishing or skilled acting will ever make me 6’1″ or thin (yeah, okay, I can get thin by correcting my eating habits and getting more exercise, but I don’t see that happening). Be honest, with yourself and with the director.

Optionally, you may include your clothing sizes. The director won’t use this for the audition, but the theatre’s costumer will appreciate the advance knowledge.

Your Curriculum Vita

Acting Experience This should be a borderless table listing no more than six roles you’ve performed in the last six-to-ten years. Your most recent role should be at the top, and this is the last role you played, even if you played the punching tree in Pocahontas. The rest can be favorites, or roles you feel were significant in some way, but no more than six.

The role info should include, the year, role, play, and theatre or troupe. The exact date isn’t important. If you played multiple roles, list the one with the most lines or stage time, or just say “multiple” or “various” if they were equally minor (I was the punching tree, but I was also the sitting rock, so maybe…) Be honest. Most director’s won’t be overly impressed with a CV loaded to the gills with plum roles, but they will be put off by obvious bullshit.

Other Theatre Experience If you don’t mind doing background work instead of (or, in addition to) being onstage, list what you’ve done before. You should have at least one entry for each position you’ve held, even if they were in the same show (unless the jobs are closely related–say set design and construction). The only exception is if you were the director. A director has to fill in where he’s needed, and if you ended up running lights for two thirds of a show’s run because your light person couldn’t wait three more weeks to go into labor, you still only get to list yourself as having directed.

Other skills Do you have a good voice? Have you been told this by someone other than your mother? Put down singing. Otherwise, don’t put down any skill that you have not been trained to do or can’t back up somehow. No one cares if you can play “Stairway to Heaven” on your pawn shop guitar; what the director needs to know is if you can play second guitar on “Two Tickets to Paradise” from the sheet music. You can’t choreograph if you haven’t at least taken dance classes, and you can’t juggle if you can’t keep three balls in the air for longer than it takes to say, “Oh, crap.”

Other skills are great, and sometimes (rarely) can be the difference between a great role and “thanks; we’ll call you,” but you have to actually have those skills, or you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. I’ve learned enough stuff to get by in shows because the director was more interested in actors, but I wouldn’t call them “other skills”.

And that’s it. That’s your résumé. If it goes beyond one page, you should edit it down, cut out duplications in the “Other Experience” section, or cut “other skills” entirely. In the end, what you want is a single page that the director can look at and go, “Oh, yeah. That’s the guy.”

Listen, we need to talk. I’ve been around the Houston small theatre community for a while, now, and I have to say, I’m getting a little bothered by what I’m starting to see. To be honest, I think that much of the problem comes from a simple misunderstanding: You are not professional theatres, so quit trying to pretend you are.

Now, the reason I said, “small” theatre instead of “community” or “amateur” theatre is simple. I’m not just talking to those theatres that claim “education” or “community arts” in their founding documents. I’m talking to every little theatre that pays its actors less than Equity scale and its crew members less than minimum wage. You know who you are. I don’t care if you call it a stipend or offer them points on net as “co-producers”, if the total payout divided by the time you expect them to be there is less than a minimal living wage, you’re not professional. At best, you’re a start-up.

Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with running an amateur or startup theatre. You ask half of Hollywood and all of Broadway how they got their start and they’ll trot out some long, tear-filled story of the community theatre that first sparked their love of the boards. More so, small theatre inspires an interest in the arts in general, in literature, history, and even science and the trades. Small theatre is an honorable genre, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

It is not, however, professional theatre, so different rules have to apply.

You don’t get to prioritize yourself above your volunteers’ lives. The main difference between professional and small theatre is that, when all the numbers are crunched, professional theatres pay their employees something that comes close to what the government considers a living wage. If you’re not cutting checks for everyone in your shop, including for rehearsals, then you have no right to expect them to treat their hobby like a job. That means you have to make allowances for their real job, and sometimes for other issues that may come up in their lives. Parents have to put their children before their hobbies, and, these days, many adults are in the unenviable position of caring for an aged parent. These people can’t always maintain a grueling 30-hour-a-week rehearsal schedule. Or even a light 20.

I’m not saying anyone should tolerate bullshit. If an actor is skipping whole chunks of rehearsal or refuses to learn their lines or approximate their blocking, by all means boot them out like a hobo. No one wants a bad show, and tolerating bullshit is one of the quickest ways to get one. I’m just asking that you show some reasonable restraint. If an actor is otherwise tight, then letting him skip a Saturday to check on his aged mother is probably not going to kill you.

Really, I guess it all comes down to this: Never forget that your volunteers are volunteers. They don’t owe you a goddamn thing. Period. They do what they do for love of the craft and because you asked them to. Sets go up, props get built, and lights shine because someone— who isn’t even getting the thrill of having 50-100 people applaud their ability to spit out words —is making it happen. Ushers (and other lobby volunteers) get to see a show for free, but “free” often means they have to attend to the needs of 50-100 people, wrangle refreshments, ensure the balance of the box, and clean up the auditorium afterward. Don’t try to fob off unwanted chores on these people like they’re immigrant dishwashers.

They’re volunteers, and failing to show your appreciation of their effort is the easiest way to lose them. And without volunteers, you won’t have a theatre at all.