Musical Director
The musical director works with the stage director in musical theatre
productions or other plays with music. She works within the director's
production concept for the overall show.
Her functions include teaching the music and coaching singers on interpretation,
vocal technique, and the style of music. Musicals today are written in
a variety of musical styles, often combining several styles in one show.
The musical director works with singers to achieve the appropriate style,
whether it is jazz, classical, rock, or gospel. Many comic characters will
also use a character voice to both speak and sing on stage. By coaching
in rehearsals, she helps singers to create the dramatic intent of
their songs. The musical director may work as the rehearsal accompanist,
or another musician may be hired to accompany rehearsals. The musical
director is often responsible for hiring, rehearsing, and conducting
the pit orchestra. In performance, the musical director may conduct
the pit orchestra, may play keyboard or another instrument, or other musicians
and a conductor may be hired for a show's technical rehearsals and run.
Choreographer
The choreographer works with the director in musical theatre or other
plays that involve dance or stylized movement. Some plays set in
other time periods will have a movement coach who teaches movement
appropriate to the time period that may or may not include dance.
The choreographer, like the music director, works with the director's production
concept in staging dances. He selects movement styles appropriate
to the music and the director's concept, composes the dances, teaches them,
and rehearses them for proper technique. Unlike the choreographer
working for a dance company, the theatre choreographer must consider the
dramatic
effect, the purpose of the dance within the plot, and the motivations
of the characters involved when composing.
Fight Director
A final kind of director is the fight director. He is skilled and usually
certified
in stage combat. Like the music director and choreographer, the
fight director works with the director and follows her production concept.
Fight directors stage hand-to-hand combat as one might see in a
western's bar room brawl, fighting with historic weapons such as
the epee which is found in the final scenes of Hamlet, and fighting
with contemporary weapons as we often find in a murder mystery.
Fight sequences are said to be "choreographed" and are composed and
rehearsed move by move like dances. Many period plays like Shakespeare's
Hamlet require detailed period fight choreography in their climactic moments
which must be minutely choreographed with lines and dramatic intentions.
Mysteries and action plays and movies often require extensive stage combat
as well; consider the extensive chase sequences in movies like Raiders
of the Lost Ark.
End of Director Readings