CONSULTING

When staging a show, as in any human activity, your personal and professional involvement may sometimes cloud your view of the whole. You may be aware that you are experiencing difficulties, but precisely because you are immersed in them you are unable to observe them objectively.
Consulting, when received in a timely moment of the production, generates productive discussion and exchange with colleagues specialized in a particular field, on a variety of issues, and can eventually lead you to a visualization of the problems at hand and a joint analysis regarding their possible solutions.

What is consulting?

An interactive educational resource which allows you to explore possible solutions to the problems frequently encountered when you are teaching, developing a project or staging a show.

For which areas may consulting be required?

In playwriting, stage direction, acting, set design, lighting design, costume design, educational methods and group dynamics.

What does consulting consist of?

There are two main types of theatre consulting, depending upon the moment in which it is required: work in project, if the staging process has not yet begun, or work in process if the production is already on its way.

In order to explain consulting on work in project, let us take for example a theatre company or group that wishes to begin a staging process. In this case, consulting may help focus the process of selecting an appropriate script and its analysis, suggest various games and exercises to help consolidate the show’s cast, suggest improvisation exercises to help explore the text, guide various aspects of design choices for the set, costumes and lighting, contribute towards developing a production plan and calendar, and general counseling on various aspects of the staging process.

For a work in process, what we try to achieve is that the director or designers may, through dialogue, reflect upon the problems that have arisen. This type of consulting tries to provide tools through discussion that may allow the director or the entire group to find their own solutions.

If the director has encountered certain problems which he or she cannot resolve, specific games and exercises that can help the group to overcome them will be suggested. In the case of problems related to design, the consultant may suggest procedural alternatives and will assess design plans and materials in order to help find solutions.

Consultants do not interfere nor determine the artistic process itself. They do not impose ways of doing things. Artistic decisions belong to the director or the group being advised. Consulting allows them to share an outside, uncontaminated view of their process as a group and as theatre artists, thus helping them to optimize their resources and energy towards the proper development of their creative process. Only in case that the director or designer should specifically request it will the consultant work directly with the group of actors or designers, or intervene and suggest adjustments to the play itself.