Personal Statement.

Line of Enquiry.

As a member of the Musical Theatre Company course, I was particularly interested in exploring the role of the performer as a collaborator in the ICP module, with a specific focus on acting. As someone who often feels drawn to acting-heavy roles, I feel that acting is the most important of the three theatrical disciplines, yet is often the most overlooked. As Zununov (2024) states: “while musical numbers and choreography often receive the most attention, acting is the essential core” (p.181). In my opinion, a performer’s vocal prowess or dance ability often does not matter if they cannot use their acting skills to bring complexity to their performance and establish an emotional connection with an audience. Music and choreography help to heighten the emotions of a show or song, but the emotions themselves can only exist through acting.

Specifically, I wanted to analyse the relationship between an actor’s agency and a director’s vision, and how that varies between different styles of collaboration. Bertha (2009) states that an artist has a “central place[…]within a work of art” (p. 347); yet, it cannot be denied that a director often has significant influence over an actor’s performance, and may dismiss an actor’s choices in favour of their own interpretation (Stimac, 2019). On the other hand, many actors acknowledge that often the ‘right’ director allows their performance to soar to new heights (Stimac, 2019). In my experience as both an actor and a director, I believe there is a delicate balance to be struck. Directors with a clear vision that they refuse to stray from can be stifling for an actor who may have their own ideas for a role; however, a director with too few ideas can often lead to unclear aims for a piece and an actor’s performance. On the other hand, I understand that it can be equally frustrating for a director when an actor relies solely on them to create the characterisation of a role. Since most of my performing and directing experience has been in ‘traditional’ styles of theatre (for example, putting on a previously published musical that has been performed before), I was extremely keen to explore how the actor-director relationship manifested in ‘untraditional,’ more collaborative styles of theatre.

Documentation.

Over the past five weeks, I have contributed to several different kinds of collaborative process with my fellow MA students. Taking on a performer role, I was able to observe and analyse the relationship between myself and the directors in each process and how these varied from process to process.

New Work Lab Week 2 – ‘Tomorrow’ Creative Prompt.

ICP Workshop Week 3 – Mini Workshops.

ICP Workshop Weeks 4 & 5 – Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process.

Performance Project – ‘Our House.’

Reflections & Analysis.

I found that the relationship between my agency as an actor and the vision of the director(s) changed significantly between processes. When working on our response to the ‘tomorrow’ prompt, we took a much more traditional approach to collaboration. Our roles were almost completely distinct, with each person having a clear idea of their role was and what was expected of them, with virtually no crossover between roles. This was a similar experience to my past collaborations and I felt comfortable in this set-up. What was interesting to note about this process was that we only had a week to create and rehearse the piece – and perhaps it was this time constraint that caused us to fall into a more ‘traditional’ and individualised set-up. In processes such as the ‘Our House’ Performance Project, we initially fell into our traditional roles; however, over the several weeks of rehearsals, I found that myself and my fellow actors had an increasingly greater scope to make suggestions in the rehearsal room, even if they contradicted the original vision of the directors. I also found that, when blocking or rehearsing, we were given much more space to add in our own characterisations without prior input from the directors. Although we may have discussed or changed things at a later point, it was often our ideas and actions as actors that set the basis for future direction, rather than the initial directorial vision.

In describing different types of actor-director relationships, I found Jo Butterworth’s Didactic-Democratic framework model (2009, p. 90) extremely helpful.

Although initially created as a way of categorising different types of dancer-choreographer relationship, I found it easy to apply this model to the actor-director relationship as well. It has been found that collaborations that feature indistinct roles or a less clear aims take considerably longer to result in the creation of an end product, unlike collaborations that feature individualised roles and clear pathways towards the end goal (Candy, 2019). During my experiences in ICP, I found this to be accurate. Time constraints on a project often lead to a more traditional, or didactic, division of roles as this, typically, leads to a more efficient and streamlined process. In ‘traditional’ theatre settings – such as our response to the ‘tomorrow’ creative prompt – it seems unlikely that the actor-director relationship will bypass process 2. At times, actors may be given opportunities to make offers, but, ultimately, the actor’s job is to make the directorial vision come to life through their performance. Processes which have a longer rehearsal period, such as the ‘Our House’ Performance Project, allow more space to trial different ideas and, while they may initially begin as a primarily didactic process, may start to become more democratic as time goes on, eventually sitting around process 3 on Butterworth’s model.

Another process I found helpful when considering the relationship between actors’ agency and directors’ visions was Lerman’s Critical Response Process. This is an artist-focussed process that allows artists to receive constructive feedback from other artists, with a facilitator in place to ensure the process stays on-topic and valuable for all parties. (Lerman, 2020). It allows artists to protect their agency and to choose which specific areas they wish to receive feedback on, and which they would rather not discuss at that particular point in time. (Lerman, 2020). I found this process incredibly useful – I have often found that I struggle to provide criticism in an effective way, whilst still celebrating the work that has been shared. The Critical Response Process, specifically the use of ‘neutral questions,’ gave me a format to offer feedback that allowed me to better understand a work and the intentions behind it before bringing any personal opinions into my critiques. Once I had sought clarification on anything I was uncertain about or the wider context of the piece, I typically found that any concerns I had were vanquished before I could even voice them. Whilst it is only natural to emotionally react to art, the Critical Response Process allows responders to have a clearer and more objective understanding of a work without their own feelings clouding their judgement.

Regarding the actor-director relationship, I believe it is beneficial for directors to be given an opportunity to view their developing projects through the lens of an actor, and vice versa. Not all directors are actors, and not all actors are directors – a director may pick up on potential staging issues an actor does not, or an actor may notice an unrealistic performance expectation that was overlooked by a director. The Critical Response Process allows for people from different theatrical disciplines to comment on each other’s work, sharing their own valuable expertise and allowing for everyone’s concerns to be voiced in a controlled environment. I found the process to be entirely democratic, akin to process 5 on Butterworth’s framework. This sort of democratic process was almost entirely new to me, and I enjoyed seeing how actors and directors can use each other’s perspectives to improve their work, even in situations where there is with no defined hierarchy of roles.

Not every collaborative process helped me directly in my exploration of the actor-director relationship, but were beneficial in other ways. In our ‘micro-workshops’ session, we split into smaller groups and each person led the other group members through a short workshop based on their own practice. I found it incredibly interesting to get a glimpse of how different disciplines approached new projects. For example, a dramaturg taught us an exercise where we answered questions based on our favourite films. The idea of this was that, when creating a piece, all the questions need to be easily answerable – if even one is a challenge to answer, it is back to the drawing board until that answer can be found, otherwise the story will not make sense to an audience. As an actor, I am used to being given scripts that are the final draft of a piece, and so it was eye-opening to consider the writing and editing process which virtually all scripts go through. One of the directors also did a workshop on ensemble devising – whilst I have directing experience, I have very little experience in devising, and found this an intriguing experience as an actor. It allowed me to consider how actors ‘playing’ in a room can help directors visualise and workshop things without making definitive decisions for a piece. Whilst this was not necessarily helpful in exploring the relationship between actors’ agency and directors’ visions, as we were not working on a specific piece, it was useful to explore how actors can assist directors through their own performance skills and experiences during the creative beginnings of a new work.

Conclusion.

During the ICP module, I have experienced many different types of collaboration, both familiar and entirely new to me. The relationship between an actor’s agency and a director’s vision varied between these collaborative styles, both in ways I predicted and ways I never expected. I was surprised at how, often, the type of actor-director relationship that is struck is not due to the people in the roles themselves, but due to other restraints – for example, time constraints usually lead to a more didactic process being adopted to ensure a more efficient creative process. I also found that democratic processes were more often found at the beginnings of a project – for example, a director asking actors for feedback using Lerman’s Critical Response Process. Through learning from other MAs from other courses, I have developed my skills as an actor in a way that will allow me to contribute helpfully even to the most didactic process, and allow me to better understand other collaborative roles, hopefully leading to me becoming a better and fairer collaborator who can strike up harmonious relationships with directors based on the collaboration style being used.

Moving Forward.

As Street said: “the reality is that it takes a lot to hold a collaborative space. A lot of energy, positive intention, openness, respect” (2024). As I continue through our next block of classes, I am looking forward to exploring the relationship between actors’ agency and directors’ visions in an even wider range of collaborative processes. I would particularly like to spend more time engaging in democratic processes, as I feel I have a lot to offer in those, both as an actor and also potentially as a director. I am keen to continue developing my skills as an actor, and learning how these can be used to best benefit directors within different collaborative styles – I still find it difficult sometimes to know when my offers as an actor are warranted, and I would like to spend more time figuring this out. Ultimately, I am excited to continue my exploration of the actor-director relationship, and how my agency as an actor can co-exist with a director’s vision for a project in a way that allows us both to produce our best work in a productive environment.

Word Count: 2163 (with captions), 2055 (without captions).

Bibliography.

Bertha, C. (2009) ‘Visual Art and Artist in Contemporary Irish Drama’, Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 15(2), pp. 347-367

Butterworth, J. (2009) Contemporary Choreography. 1st Edition. London/New York: Routledge

Candy, L. (2019) The Creative Reflective Practitioner. 1st edition. Abingdon: Routledge

Lerman, L. (2020) Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process. Available at https://lizlerman.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Critical-Response-Process-in-Brief_CRP-one-pager_updated-2020_03_24.pdf (Accessed November 2025)

Stimac, E. (2019) Bridging the Communication Gap Between Performers and Directors. Available at https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/bridging-communication-gap-performers-directors-44766/ (Accessed: November 2025)

Street, S. (2024) All together now: time to embrace the power of collaborative theatremaking. Available at https://www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/all-together-now-time-to-embrace-the-power-of-collaborative-theatremaking-stephanie-street (Accessed: November 2025)

Zununov, R. (2024) ‘The Role of Acting in Musical Theater: A Fusion of Storytelling and Performance’, European Journal of Innovation in Nonformal Education, 4(9), pp. 181-183