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As part of our program's mission, we quickly recognized that part of our job is to help our audience and community better understand the how and why of .  For many in our community, we are their first exposure to  and that's a big responsibility!  While we want to turn single-ticket buyers into repeat visitors, we desire to build a deeper relationship with our audiences that enables them to become life-long  participants.  The director's note is an important piece of making your audiences part of the artistic inner circle by helping them develop a deeper understanding of the theatrical process, how to think about and see its value.  Any way you focus your note, this is an important piece of advocacy!

Each season, we choose a major theme, idea, or question that connects all of our shows.  Last year's season was "Interconnected: how your actions affect others."  This year's season is "Coming Together: the strength and value of community."  Making that information public helps our students, parents, and audience community begin to see why we have chosen certain shows and the educational merit of each pick.  The director's note is an important way to further educate the audience on the merit of each individual piece.  (This is especially helpful in productions where there might be controversial content.  For shows with controversial content, check out this blog HERE that explains a process to help the audience find the merit of a show.)

Having a season theme is also artistically helpful because it guides your actors to delve deeper into their own performance.  How do their character and their character’s actions play into that theme?  When producing “Mary Poppins” this fall, the actors-- unprompted-- began to discuss how the Banks family has to be completely dysfunctional and disconnected at the beginning, for there to be a transformation by the end of the show when they learn the strength and value of their family through Mary.  The theme had set up a framework for each student to analyze the show and created a pathway for discovery based learning. The joy of discovery motivates students to learn and made it personally meaningful for the student.

We noticed that most of our audiences were never taught how to even begin to think about and that the director’s note is an important piece in modeling how to approach and think about .  This note is an opportunity to shape the lens in which the piece is viewed, leading the audience to think beyond the sheer entertainment value of a show and to begin to see the well thought out purpose behind our choices.  For example, in “Mary Poppins," it is quite easy to take the show on the surface level of entertainment and magic. We used the director's note to help the audience dig deeper into the meaning and themes of the piece. (I have the link HERE if you'd like an example.)

To begin writing the director’s note, I consider what message, idea, or question I’d like the audience to come away with.  Typically, this is very closely related to our season theme.  Then, I gather my company together for inquiry-based instruction. Inquiry-based learning is fundamental for the development of higher order thinking skills, as it teaches students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information or new understandings.  The higher order thinking skills that students develop during inquiry activities will assist in the critical thinking skills they can transfer to other subjects.

As a facilitator, I gather all the students in the company together and begin with the following questions: “Why is it important that we tell this story?  What message, idea, or question do you want the audience to come away with?  What message, idea, or question do you think the author wanted the audience to come away with?”   We synthesize our answers into one key idea and begin to obtain supportive evidence by identifying where this message, idea, or question is brought up in the show.  (I find it helpful to take notes during this process because it makes the final writing process much easier!)  The next stage of instruction is to ask students, “Why is this message, idea, or question important today?”

From this one discussion, students have now gained a broader understanding of ’s purpose, and you have now armed each of your company member’s with the important arguments of why .  Nothing makes me feel like a proud teacher more than when an audience member asks a question in our talk back and students can quickly respond to the why and value of .

If the show connects to another discipline like history, English, or science, we can use the director’s note, and/or a dramaturgy note, to highlight those connections.  Theatre has the power to take abstract concepts and make them concrete, and it is essential advocacy to show your audiences that.  Many times, while I write the director’s note, students pair this note with their own dramaturgical note to directly evidence the students’ curricular connections.

Our current show, “The Kentucky Cycle: Fire in the Hole,” is based on the Mine Wars of West Virginia in the 1920s, studied in junior year US history.  Not only did we want to display that connection, we wanted our public to see how the show reflects real historical events and people, especially since some of the events were violent.  Sharing the dramaturgical note connecting to those real events with the history teachers will,l in turn, encourage those teachers to advocate their students to come see the production.  Exhibiting this interdisciplinary value will help get other teachers, administrators, and community members behind your program, and any support is always greatly welcomed.  You can even consider emailing the note to company parents before the show, and the proud parents will discuss with other parents how their student is learning history through , becoming advocates themselves.  It also helps parents talk up the show, which is great publicity!