What They Really
Want to Be is Direct:
Director Training Graduates Speak Out
BackStage, November 17, 2000
Director Joanna Settle has participated in three major
director training programs – Juilliard’s Graduate
Directing Program, the Lincoln Center Theater Director’s
Lab, and, currently, the NEA/TCG Career Development program.
“The Juilliard program is a graduate-level directing
fellowship. I was in the inaugural year of the program,
which was free, and lasted two years. It is now a three-year
program, and is still tuition-free. When I went, the faculty
was Michael Kahn, JoAnne Akalaitis, and Garland Right.
It was unbelievable. What I most got out of that experience
was the ability to fully appreciate a complex text, like
plays by Shakespeare and Moliere.”
Settle was at Juilliard when she was invited to join the
Lincoln Center Theater Director’s Lab, which she
felt was equally valuable. “I remember being in a
room with 40 directors, which never happens. There were
all types of directors there–a children’s community
theatre director from Seattle, a Broadway assistant director,
a downtown director, directors from regional and dinner
theatres, and some who had their own companies.”
She had spent five years working in lower NYC venues,
with groups like Mabou Mines and the Ontological Theatre. “I
came very distinctly from downtown experimental theatre.
I anticipated and worried that Juilliard would be like
going to theatre church, that somehow focusing on text
would impede my visual sensibilities. It ended up being
on of the most artistically freeing experiences of my life.”
Moving to Chicago in 1997, Settle formed her own company,
Division 13 Productions (formerly Thirteenth Tribe). “We
are going strong these days, world premiere translation
by Gavin Witt, at the Chopin Theatre on Dec. 2. Ionesco’s
rewrite of ‘Macbeth’ seems to be the perfect
combination of downtown and Juilliard.”
She just started her six-month term in the NEA/TCG Career
Development Program. “There are four things you can
do with that grant. You can observe, you can assist, you
can meet people, and you can make your own work. I chose
not to do my own work because I already have my company.
What I wanted the grant for was to observe work I would
not necessarily be involved in, or not necessarily go to
see.”
In addition to the programs she has entered, Settle also
recommends all theatre artists look into the Mabou Mines
Resident Artist Program, and The Usual Suspects, a creative
group based out of the New York Theatre Workshop.
Settle feels that there are two types of emerging directors. “Some
directors are aggressive with their resumes – they
make that their main tactic, getting staged readings and
assisting jobs. Then there’s the kind of director
that I was, which is self-producing. When I was in New
York, I produced my own shows, spending whatever money
I could earn to put on a play, which meant small-scale
and low-tech productions. I eventually came to Chicago
because I wanted to put up 25-person plays that ran over
two hours and rehearsed for 10 weeks. It’s really
hard to do that in New York.”
