Welcome to Snow Falling on Cedars
I had a theatre professor one time who told our class that being a director requires "the courage and conviction of your own bad taste." It was Bill Becvar, who co-founded the Tacoma Actors Guild. And Bill was talking about an ORDINARY directing project, where you might be staging the umteen-thousandth production of The Rainmaker or something, and you might have to go out on a limb and decide that the guy playing the Rainmaker Dude, whatever his name is, should wear a blue cowboy shirt. That's a rather cynical example, and not to diminish the theatre director's task, but Bill probably wasn't thinking as far ahead as a Book-It project, where the concept of making decisions really presents itself. Instead of figuring out how to make actors move convincingly around a single barnyard set, a Book-It artist has to make the audience believe that Sancho and Don Quixote are tilting at windmills, when there's nothing resembling a windmill or a donkey anywhere near the stage. You can't fly in the windmill drop, or wheel on the windmill wagon. It's up to you to create those illusions for the audience, and the creativity of those choices might determine the success of the production. Will the audience buy the conceit? Is it the best possible solution to the challenge, given the circumstances?
I guess that's why I like working at Book-It so much. There are choices to make constantly, for EVERYTHING, and you have only yourself to blame for making them. Most people seemed to like the other project I directed for Book-It, Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons back in 2003, but some people most decidedly did NOT, friends included. I don't recall anybody saying to me "It was okay." And I took that as the best unspoken compliment. Better to win a few and lose a few, perhaps in a big way, but don't go boring people to death. So like it or not, Snow Falling on Cedars will not be boring. And given the challeges that we face in creating fishing boats and fog-shrouded inlets for the audience, it will not be conventional, either.
People who asked me what I was doing a few months ago got an answer like " I'm working on a stage adaptation of Snow Falling on Cedars." Then they would look at me in a conciliatory way and say "That's a great book." Which was actually a polite way of saying "Don't screw it up." And I knew what they meant. There would have been a lot less pressure staging some book nobody's heard of - but such a popular novel, an award-winner, big-movie book - going to attract some attention. Not going to meet everyone's expectations, but then again, it may exceed some as well.
Anyway, got a great group of actors. Got a great design team who solved a lot of my staging questions before I even began. About three weeks left before our first audience and we seem to be in fairly good shape - running the show in sequence now, going back and working stuff. I adapted it on the short side, so we're not having to cut volumes of material, we actually had the luxury of fleshing out some parts by adding material back in to the adaptation. Conventional two-act format, each act should come in right around an hour each. So we'll keep our fingers crossed and try to deliver the goods. I just keep telling myself and the actors to tell the story, as clearly as we can. Guterson did it very eloquently in his novel, now it's up to us to do it on stage.
I guess that's why I like working at Book-It so much. There are choices to make constantly, for EVERYTHING, and you have only yourself to blame for making them. Most people seemed to like the other project I directed for Book-It, Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons back in 2003, but some people most decidedly did NOT, friends included. I don't recall anybody saying to me "It was okay." And I took that as the best unspoken compliment. Better to win a few and lose a few, perhaps in a big way, but don't go boring people to death. So like it or not, Snow Falling on Cedars will not be boring. And given the challeges that we face in creating fishing boats and fog-shrouded inlets for the audience, it will not be conventional, either.
People who asked me what I was doing a few months ago got an answer like " I'm working on a stage adaptation of Snow Falling on Cedars." Then they would look at me in a conciliatory way and say "That's a great book." Which was actually a polite way of saying "Don't screw it up." And I knew what they meant. There would have been a lot less pressure staging some book nobody's heard of - but such a popular novel, an award-winner, big-movie book - going to attract some attention. Not going to meet everyone's expectations, but then again, it may exceed some as well.
Anyway, got a great group of actors. Got a great design team who solved a lot of my staging questions before I even began. About three weeks left before our first audience and we seem to be in fairly good shape - running the show in sequence now, going back and working stuff. I adapted it on the short side, so we're not having to cut volumes of material, we actually had the luxury of fleshing out some parts by adding material back in to the adaptation. Conventional two-act format, each act should come in right around an hour each. So we'll keep our fingers crossed and try to deliver the goods. I just keep telling myself and the actors to tell the story, as clearly as we can. Guterson did it very eloquently in his novel, now it's up to us to do it on stage.