Michael Hunter 25103684

Building the Gaze: A Comparative Analysis of the Directorial Agency between Stage and Screen

I have spent my career mostly dealing in action that falls into the frame of a camera lens, and how I can push audiences to see what I wish them to see, to take the emotional cues I wish them to. What happens to that ability when you take away your control of the frame? if it grows to a point where everything falls into the frame?  When it’s so big you can’t directly point at the tiny performance and nuanced skill or a cut away, and you rely on a different set of skills, built by a whole new team who I don’t know what they do, and still manage to have that emotional response from an audience.

In this journal I will look for those moments of overlap, and the liminal states between stage and screen and then explore the breadth and depth of the creative’s skills needed to fulfil audiences’ satisfaction. I will examine three theatre productions I have been fortunate to be in the rooms for, where these discussions were had and overcome. I will examine the work of screen practitioners to compare and contrast those same solutions in this incredibly overlapped yet miles apart artform. And finally reflect on what that means for me as an artist, emerging into this industry again post masters hibernation, will one skillset inform the other? Or overtake entirely, or find balance between it all?

My first introduction to the liminal space between stage and screen was Small Island, an adaptation by Helen Edmundson of the Novel by Andrea Levy first produced at the National Theatre directed by Rufus Norris, The play is an account of four peoples experiences in a post war society, following Hortense and Gilbert, an RAF veteran, who are immigrating from Jamaica after the war, and The Blighes, Queenie and Bernard a white English couple who run a boarding house where Gilbert and Hortense rent a room. The play centres around the overlapped relationships connecting the four via Hortense’s cousin Michael Roberts, who served with Gilbert, and had a relationship with Queenie during the war when her husband Bernard was missing in action. The play spans time and locations from Jamaica and London.

The Leeds Playhouse co-production, Directed by Matthew Xia, and the one I have been observing uses a raised tilted square stage, lifted off the Quarry stage floor which facilitates many of set locations, and allowing actors to enter and exit the School house, Hortense’s home and the varying offices of the RAF and Queenies home in London via various steps and ramps introduced for each set location. In the first act a table and chairs sit in for the furniture in each place, as we follow Hortense leaving home to live with her mother’s cousin, and become a teacher in the school house, with additional items added later when specificity is needed, such as the sweetshop Queenie works in where she meets Bernard, an armchair for the Blighe’s boarding house. All items that in the scarcity of a grand set allow audiences an area of focus, an absence of “production” creates a visual vacuum where specificity acts as a mass drawing our collective focus.

Photo – Hortense’s childhood home Act One. Leeds Playhouse Marketing. 2026

In Anne Bogarts book, A Director Prepares she remarks, “In rehearsal we try to find shapes and forms to contain the living questions, in the present, on the stage: (Bogart, A. 2003) Bogart speaks of the theatre as an art leaning into the form rather than reality captured via a lens, theatre and film can both depict reality, and the absurd and every point on the spectrum, yes, but Bogart is arguing that theatre can use its unique ephemeral existence and limitation of space to communicate through more than dialogue and realism. Xia too captures reality in an unreal space, using form and shape to guide an audience’s gaze.

As we linger in place longer such as in Hortense and Gilberts rented room then more detail is provided, as if rendered fuller due to the increased time we spend in the space. Imagine walking into a dark space and letting your eyes adjust to the light, and with each second spent there you construct a more detailed vision of your place and surroundings, this is the feeling you get with this staging.

Photo -Marketing image from Leeds Playhouse. 2026

Matthew Xia told Sophia A Jackson for the Afridiziak Theatre News podcast, “I often use ‘sculpting’ as a term. We are sculpting the space. If an actor moves two inches to the left, it changes the entire geometry of the power dynamic on that stage.” (Xia, M. Cited in Jackson. 2026) Matthew is incredibly detailed in his direction, as covered in my presentation, he incredibly cinematic in his staging and blocking, and it shows in the way he sculpts the action to unfold into “tableau.” (Xia 2026)  I overheard him in conversation on the first day the play was on its feet in his address to cast and crew, “I want to paint pictures” (Xia 2026) Xia is aware how audiences consume story.

You can argue that cinema has, if not perfected, how to convey information to an audience in the most interesting and efficient way, it has given audience’s a method they expect. Xia is conscious of this in every movement of a person, prop, stage, light, as he tells Jackson,

“When I’m blocking, I’m thinking about the ‘kinetic energy’ between the bodies. It’s not just about where they stand for the shot, it’s about the tension in the air between them that has to reach the back of the upper circle”. (Xia, M. Cited in Jackson. 2026)

A sentiment shared with his screen directing counterparts. As Ron Howard puts in his directing masterclass,

“The director is, is the first audience member, if you make yourself, [the] audience member and start to understand what it is that you like about it, you can carry that […] focus into your work when you begin to make a film” (Howard, R. 2018)

Creating a specific “gaze” for the audience, each director, each medium, knows how audiences behave, and what they need to deliver for audiences to maximise the storytelling experience. In my presentation I quoted Matthew’s idea on audiences’ gaze which applies similarly here. “The biggest difference is the democracy of the gaze. In cinema, the director chooses exactly what you see, when you see it, and for how long. In theatre… the audience can look anywhere.” (Xia, M. Cited in Jackson. 2026) It’s in this quote, this idea of a democracy of gaze that Xia demonstrates his understanding of the prevailing construct of storytelling and applying it to his own work in the staging of theatre, as a screen director I know my toolkit, I know my frame, my pace, my edits, I can smash zoom into a close up to show intensity, slowly dolly out to reveal loneliness or abandonment, I can fly a drone or a jib arm to convey motion. In a story where nuance and identity are present and most powerful in those small moments, how does one push an audience’s gaze?

Xia is responding to the audience’s needs, pinpointing the moments in text that audiences need, Ron Howard would highlight the same moments, storytelling is universal. Xia is pragmatic in his understanding of audience’s, he creates an accessible space, with an eye on bringing audiences along and not missing a beat. His use of cinematic moments with an instinct to navigate the gaze as much as possible is modern, well-balanced viewpoint. Katie Mitchell in her book The Directors craft argues, “It is essential that actors are arranged on the stage so that the action, events and key story points are visible and well-focused for the audience. This is a major part of your work as a director.” (Mitchell, K. 2009) Here Mitchell is slightly countering Xia’s instincts with a call to action in how to tackle the same problem, where Xia advances Mitchell is in his understanding that audiences have differing needs, and not an assumed single point of view experience.

Xia is not at a disadvantage though, although his methods cannot guide a viewer’s eyes through the smaller frame of a camera lens, he does use his arsenal in ways that film, at least in the modern sense of mainstream cinema convention, can’t. Xia drops pools of light, illuminating spaces and object and people, forcing our gaze to those desired moments leaving the stage dark except for those moments. Xia paints pictures, tableaux’s of moments bathed in the limelight of the Quarry Hill stage, to some success, as witnessed during the tech rehearsal, he didn’t move on a moment until any and all light, sound, stage movements were choreographed as if spliced on a Movieola flatbed editing machine, as permanent as the cutting room floor. He is in real time wondering from desk to desk of heads of departments not as director, he’s already directed the play, he is now editor to borrow a title from film. Finding the visual language of connective tissue in order to serve the story best for its audience.

Both Xia, Mitchell, and Howard are starting from the same place, but with different tools, where Xia uses light, sound, blocking, and stage design to push an audience’s gaze, in subtle yet precise detail, Mitchell sculpts action to fit the space and needs of the words, Howard has additional frame size, edits, camera movement to illuminate the text and performance. As stated by Alexander Mackendrick in his book On Filmmaking, “Through the use of different screen sizes and the framing of shots, the juxtaposition of camera angles and point of view, expressive music and lighting, and the principles of editing, they found that the camera can, uniquely, photograph thought” (Mackendrick, A. 2012)

The conceit of this staging for Small Island in its conception and delivery is that it rotates. In that space, that raised square in the Quarry Hill theatre with its fly in walls and furniture, is just a way to move action from scene to scene, from moment to moment in a way that mimics film editing. As Matthew Xia puts it in the Afridiziak Theatre News Podcast, “It’s almost like a film it jump cuts… we’re outside the schoolhouse, we’re inside the schoolhouse, we’re back at the dinner table… getting our heads around that has taken some work.” (Jackson, S. 2026)

I witnessed the very first moments the stage rotated in rehearsal, the script calls for a multi scene delivery that follows Queenies initial intimate relationship with Michael, Hortense’s cousin.

 (Act 1 Scene 7 pages 45-48)

It is in this scene change from Queenie and Michael to Hortense and Gilbert that the stage begins to rotate for this first time, just as Queenie speaks. Matthew brings each scene centre stage “cutting” between each like a cinematic cross edit, but in real ephemeral time and space. The purpose for this being the initial point the stage moves was divulged to me by Sara Malick the Assistant Director in conversation that took place on February 13th, I asked her why then, what makes this the first place to move? she replied and I paraphrase a little, this is the moment in the whole story where the finale is set, we begin the chain of events in these two interweaved moments that take them all across oceans and events to lead us to the end.

The moment finishes with Gilbert and Hortense narrating outwards as they rotate between lines and revealing Michael and Queenie post intimacy.

 (Act 1 Scene 7 pages 45-48)

Where Xia and Howard reflect each other’s artistic merits through each’s specific medium, what is it like when the story you’re telling isn’t based on real historic events and is using story to create a world built to convey emotion and theme. I would hope both these are a foundational part of every story, but what happens when you create a story set in the unfamiliar world of the afterlife.

The Dark Carnival is an Actor Musician led play following a love story where each are separated by the veil of death. Matthew Lenton’s show blends the unreal with core human emotion delivering a story that satisfies on many levels. I have been in the rehearsal room for the Leeds Conservatoire production at Slung Lows warehouse directed by ASJ (their preferred name), a northern creative and “Shakespeare Geek and Classicist” according to their Instagram bio.

My experience of Actor Musician led productions is almost none, it’s a term when I trained that I never had any dealing with therefore I was keen to contrast Small Islands cinematic poetic realism on stage with a story based in the unreal via a medium I knew very little about.

This productions staging above all is its most distinct framing device, a split level, above and below. The story centres on a band of the dead and several residents of a graveyard who along the way help two lovers reconnect. The below is the subterranean realm of the band and its ghoulish inhabitants and above is terra firma, with an occasional visit from an angel.

Photo – The Dark Carnival Vanishing Point original production photos by Mihaela Bodlovic & Niall Walker

Giving audiences clear understanding visually of the hierarchies and living status of each character gives us a short cut, a language to pay attention to initially and track characters journeys between these worlds, but mostly to allow audiences to focus mostly on the dialogue and music without keeping track of alive or dead. Such a brilliant visual language that solves a problem in one go.

Another visual storyteller with a track record of creating worlds is David Lynch, his view on this process is stated below from his Masterclass, “You want them to get on the same road that you’re on, and that road is based on the ideas.” (Lynch, D. 2019) Lynch describing the formulae of keeping audiences and directors in synch through communicating ideas simply and effectively, something The Dark Carnival achieves with its staging.

As stated earlier, I am coming to theatre and its practices fresh, I last worked as an actor over a decade and half ago, and my stage craft wasn’t something that was often called upon much in this world of commercials and days here and there on TV. Before joining Leeds Conservatoire as a teaching member of staff, my interactions with an Actor Musician show were limited at best, so I was delighted to be in the room with ASJ and the company and witness how a show with so much ensemble movement, musical storytelling, song and music, and the dialogue. As a director of screen arts I can talk to actors, I can devise a moment of action, I can establish subtle storytelling moments of pure visuals, or build momentum in the performance and dialogue, what I came into this masters with was a sense and desire to expand my skillset, my knowledge with an eye on the gaps I have when it comes to live theatre. I could happily direct a two hander dialogue heavy studio play but give me a show like The Dark Carnival and I am overloaded, as Matthew XIA describes a “democracy of gaze” (Jackson 2026) I have a paralysis of choice when I am faced with a blank stage, and a company of highly skilled actor musicians. Where do I start? How can I create the blocking to satisfy an audience, to focus a democratic gaze and construct a series of images and tableaux that work?

In screen I will allow actors to instinct run a scene, get a feel for that push and pull moments within the scene that we can exploit and create the point of view from, on stage we lack the directional P.O.V. a camera gives you, so I lose a tool. Whilst in the room for The Dark Carnival I am quietly watching and listening to ASJ give notes on the “gear 3” run we’d just witnessed, and I kept hearing things like “just off 3’ “enter and head down stage zero’ I half recognised the instruction the intent to sharpen movement but I lacked the Rosetta stone of deciphering the specifics, then I look down and laid out is a series of marks, each spread out from a zero point down centre stage divided numerically 0123 each side. As referenced in my presentation I wasn’t able to take photos in the space but have sketched out the stage and dented the numbering.

Sketches by Michael Hunter from Rehearsal room layouts of The Dark Carnival 2026

Now to a drama school graduate or an actor who has had work in these spaces, this isn’t something unusual, when I spoke of this to my master’s cohort I was met with a familiarity. I felt the absence of knowledge greatly, but I must remind myself that the same can be said if the medium is reversed and is something I witness when teaching specifically screen acting, the technical side of knowing place and movement and blocking on camera, it is the same discipline with the same purpose. Where I have a medium close up, pushed in from wide, mark 1-2. ASJ has downstage 2, moving upstage 2, slowly into centre. It is doing the same thing, creating an image or movement to denote a part of the story in such a way that audiences are compelled to observe and can take away the desired emotional reaction to this moment.

Photos courtesy of Leeds Conservatoire Instagram 2026

Whilst watching the ensemble move around this stage, delivering moments of comedy and deep sorrow like a single unified storytelling organic machine, I found myself trying to find where this ensemble staging and blocking exists in cinema. My automatic thoughts were musicals, from the grand MGM heyday of Gene Kelly Fred Astair Ginger Rogers, through West Side Story, Grease, and todays Wicked epic cinema journey, I fear that such a direct comparison using a genre I have little knowledge of its conventions and formulae would aid my understanding of the liminal space between mediums, where a directors process overlaps and where it has a totally different skillset. As I’ve already explored Matthew Xia’s cinematic stage direction, Ron Howards point of view film direction and their productions of intimate personal stories, I need to find a practitioner of cinema that deals with large, ensemble pieces, who can communicate visually story, in a way that holds audience’s attention and convey the most information. And as mentioned in my presentation I land on Akira Kurosawa, but I won’t look at High and Low for this journal but some of his other works and the works inspired by him.

Trained initially as a painter Kurosawa came to cinema and his eye for tableaux feel directly rooted in tis understanding of a frame, Kurosawa is often subject to countless video essays, the very best of these is from Tony Zhou who states in his video essay ‘Akira Kurosawa – Composing Movement’ “When you’re judging a shot, what’s the first thing you look for? … For me, Kurosawa is the Beethoven of movie directors… A Kurosawa film moves like no one else’s. Each one is a masterclass in different types of motion and also ways to combine them.” (Every Frame a Painting, 2015)

I’d like to look at two of his films that are adaptations of Shakespeare, namely 1957’s Throne of Blood, an adaptation of Macbeth, and 1985’s Ran an adaptation of King Lear. Choosing each as they almost bookend his career enabling me to show his craft spanning three decades and the consistent application of his painter learnt eye for storytelling.

Throne of Blood 1957 A. Kurosawa Film Grab

In this image Kurosawa has his Macbeth and Banquo (Washizu and Miki) meeting their supernatural witch, framing this ethereal being centrally with each man either side, framing the gaze and directing us to focus on how each are interacting, witch seated centrally holding the most space in the frame, dressed all white in contrast to each man in their dark samurai armour, each looking at her in this hierarchical triangle. Washizu and Miki taller, standing over but neither feel like they’re in charge or superior in this scene. In a similar moment of hierarchy, a later scene between Washizu and Asaji (Lady Macbeth) shows how now the idea of his actions and the stakes of it are manifesting in their relationship.

Throne of Blood 1957 A. Kurosawa Film Grab

Lit by a single light source, surrounding them both in the dark and absence of light drawing on the dark plan about to come to fruition, his uncertain paranoid looking over his shoulder whilst Asaji sits calmly allows us to quickly understand all we need about how each is taking this series of events and dealing with the emotional turmoil of treason and murder.

Similarly in RAN, Kurosawa’s King Lear we find Hidetora Ichimonji out ageing warlord in conference with his sons after a successful reign of prolonged peace brought about by Hidetora’s youth spent conquering and building his kingdom. The film begins showing the quiet prosperity of life for this family, and we see its main protagonists display their status here

RAN 1987 A. Kurosawa Film Grab

Hidetora Ichimonji stands central in white, flanked by his sons to his right and generals to his left, as he ponders the future of this land after he is gone and sets in motion the series of events that will break apart the peace he treasures, and divides his kingdom between his sons.

Towards the end of the film as Hidetora’s kingdom descends into war he is pictured again centrally here, now small in frame surrounded by the elements of wind and fire destroying his work, and flanked by the waring armies of his greed fuelled sons, as a direct reflection to our opening scene, Hidetora is centrally the reason ultimately for both the peace at the start and the bloody war it ends in.

Photo – RAN 1987 A. Kurosawa Film Grab

As Tony Zhou puts it “One of my favourite things about Kurosawa is that his blocking is unrealistic and exaggerated” (Every Frame a Painting, 2015) Kurosawa is constantly looking at how to convey theme, plot, emotion, stakes, hierarchy in a single tableau, like Xia, Like Howard, Like ASJ. The goal is the same, its application has a foundational identical set of tools and objectives, that giveaway to the medium specifics of stage and screen.

In The Dark Carnival the idea of death is dealt with humorously, in a stage vocabulary that mimics cabaret, which allows for actor musicians to flourish in this pace, and like Kurosawa make unrealistic exaggerated tableaux that directs the audience understanding of story.

Photo -Leeds Conservatoire Instagram 2026

In this series of images from rehearsal social posts, we see how ASJ has succeeded in identifying the moments of clarity and cabaret, those moments of comedy and levity in what is a powerful emotional story of grief and love in all its forms. I find the mix of height, width, direction of travel are all contributing to what’s communicated, a series of still images punctuating those emotional moments, adding the exclamation mark to a moment in the story, a full stop, a pivot point, a chance for audiences to recognise the stakes and give them a reference point to return to if needed driving the connection and emotional resonance audiences need to feel satisfied and fulfilled by the story told.

I don’t feel like I have fully completed this investigation, both via the placements I have been on, through the unmentioned but equally brilliant ‘You me and the rest of the world’ R&D with Hollie Cassar, Small Island, The Dark Carnival and my conversations with Directors, Associate Directors, screen writers and producers over the last few months, but I have absolutely found a common ground where I, as a predominantly screen director, can come into a theatre space and make work. Not only that, but make work that understands an audience’s needs, a story’s needs, and is functional, deliberately beautiful, punctuating emotion, and delivers. Whether it’s the shared foundational skills set out by renaissance artists studied by Kurosawa and Lynch that are the true depths I need to reach in order to master this skill, or if there is a hybrid somewhere I can occupy. I’m not sure yet, but I leave this process with a sense that any perceived missing knowledge of stage direction has been filled. In that sense this placement succeeded, but it’s equally opened a new pathway to at least try master it across mediums.

Bibleography

Jackson, S. (2026) ‘Matthew Xia interview – Afridiziak Theatre News’, YouTube. Edited by S. Jackson. Available at: https://youtu.be/Dd1R1NXIyIs?si=yoUnZHcV795ylpoj  (Accessed: March 2026).

Mitchell, K. (2009) P178 The Director’s Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre. Routledge.

Bogart, A. (2003) P22 A Director Prepares. Routledge.

Howard, R. (2018) Ron Howard Teaches Directing. MasterClass. Available at: www.masterclass.com [Accessed: February 2026].

Mackendrick, A., Cronin, P. and Scorsese, M. (2012) P3 On film-making : an introduction to the craft of the director. Faber And Faberđ.

Every Frame a Painting (2015) ‘Akira Kurosawa – Composing Movement’, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doaQC-S8de8. (Accessed: November 2020).

‌The Dark Carnival (2021) Vanishing Point. Available at: https://vanishing-point.org/the-dark-carnival (Accessed: March 2026).

Small Island – Leeds Playhouse (2026) Leeds Playhouse. Available at: https://www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk/event/small-island/.

Throne of Blood (2016) [FILMGRAB]. Available at: https://film-grab.com/2016/09/24/throne-of-blood/. (Accessed: April 2026).

Ran (2017) [FILMGRAB]. Available at: https://film-grab.com/2017/03/04/ran/ (Accessed: April 2026).

Leeds Conservatoire School of Drama (@leedsdrama_) • Instagram photos and videos (2017) Instagram.com. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/leedsdrama_/ (Accessed: April 2026).

Conversation with Malick. S. Associate Director Leeds Playhouse rehearsal room. Small Island Production February 2026

Conversations with Xia. M. Director Leeds Playhouse rehearsal room. Small Island Production February 2026

Conversations with ASJ. Director Leeds Conservatoire Mabgate rehearsal room. The Dark Carnival Production April 2026

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