Play Directing

Course Description

Play Directing is an introduction to the art and craft of directing for the stage. UWF states that classwork is aimed at teaching new directors the fundamentals of analyzing the text, communicating effectively with actors, working on different types of stages, and creating a cohesive production concept, and that this course requires rehearsal time outside of regularly scheduled class hours.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, TPP is the Theatre: Performance prefix. The University of West Florida publishes this at 3 semester hours through the Department of Theatre, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.

⚠⚠ UWF states plainly that the course requires rehearsal time outside scheduled class hours — an unusual and welcome piece of honesty in a catalog entry. Treat it as a real scheduling constraint: you will be coordinating other people's availability, which is harder than finding your own.

⚠ This guide exists because the statewide inventory carries the number with a C suffix and UWF publishes it without one. Note also that the inventory titles this number "Directing I," while UWF publishes "Play Directing" — and that a separate number, TPP2300C, carries "Directing I" at 14 institutions and is already documented in this repository. Two numbers, similar titles: carry the description.

Directing is the theatre discipline students most misunderstand before taking it. The popular picture is a person with a vision telling actors what to do. The working reality is closer to facilitation — making the conditions in which actors find things, asking better questions than you give answers, and holding the whole shape while everyone else holds a part of it.

⚠ The prerequisite structure tells you what the department thinks a director needs: TPP3155 Acting II and TPP3650 Script Analysis. You must have acted and you must be able to read a text. That is the right pair of requirements, and it is why this course sits late.

⚠ Why this guide exists under this number

Many Florida institutions publish this number with a C suffix, marking a combined lecture-and-laboratory course. UWF publishes it with no suffix at all, though the format is studio work in both cases — see the note on arts suffixes below. ⚠ SCNS equivalency does not cross suffixes, so transfer between the two forms is evaluated by hand. Carry a syllabus in either direction.

⚠ The contact-hour figure is derived — the University of West Florida publishes none

UWF's catalog publishes a credit value in semester hours, the college and department, prerequisites, repeat limits and fee notices. It does not publish contact hours or terms of offering for any course. Every contact-hour value in a UWF guide in this repository is derived. ⚠⚠ This is a performance studio course, and although UWF publishes no suffix on it the format is not a lecture. Acting and movement courses meet as supervised studio work, conventionally above the lecture rate and below the laboratory rate. The figure records the studio convention of 60 contact hours for 3 semester hours. ⚠ Rehearsal, performance and outside preparation are additional and are frequently the larger commitment. Confirm the meeting schedule with the department.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the role and responsibilities of the stage director.
• Analyse a text as the basis for a production.
• Develop and articulate a coherent production concept.
• Defend a concept from textual evidence.
• Communicate effectively with actors and give usable direction.
• Distinguish result-oriented direction from actionable direction.
• Cast a production and describe the considerations involved.
• Plan and run a rehearsal efficiently and respectfully.
• Structure a rehearsal schedule across a production period.
• Block a scene with attention to composition and focus.
• Describe stage configurations and adapt staging to each.
• Work with picturisation, movement, rhythm, and tempo.
• Collaborate with designers and describe the design process.
• Describe the production team and the director's place in it.
• Give notes constructively and prioritise them.
• Manage conflict and maintain a safe rehearsal environment.
• Apply consent practice and intimacy protocols as a director.
• Evaluate a production and articulate what worked and why.
• Direct a scene and defend the choices made in it.

Optional Outcomes

• Perform or exhibit work publicly.
• Give and receive critique constructively.
• Build a portfolio, reel, or repertoire list for audition or application.
• Relate the work to its historical and cultural context.
• Describe the professional practices of the field.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The director's role and responsibilities
• Text analysis for production
• Developing a production concept
• Defending a concept from evidence
• Communicating with actors
• Actionable versus result-oriented direction
• Casting
• Running a rehearsal
• Rehearsal scheduling
• Blocking, composition, and focus
• Stage configurations
• Picturisation, movement, rhythm, tempo
• Collaboration with designers
• The production team
• Giving and prioritising notes
• Conflict and rehearsal safety
• Consent and intimacy protocols
• Evaluating a production
• Directing a scene

Optional Topics

• Public performance or exhibition
• Critique practice
• Portfolio, reel, or repertoire development
• Historical and cultural context
• Professional practice in the field

Resources & Tools

• The text the instructor assigns — Hodge's Play Directing is the standard; Ball's Backwards and Forwards and Bogart's A Director Prepares are the two most useful short companions.
• A cast willing to rehearse outside class — ⚠ the actual constraint on this course. Recruit early, agree a schedule in writing, and treat your actors' time as you would want yours treated; a director who wastes it will struggle to cast the next one.
• A ground plan and scale figures, or software — draw.io and comparable tools are free; blocking is much easier to plan on paper before it is attempted with people.
• Filmed productions of plays you know — through the UWF library; watching several stagings of one text is the fastest way to see that a script does not dictate a production.
• See live theatre and read the programme — UWF productions are cheap or free to students; a director's note is a concept statement, and reading them critically is good practice.
• Stage Directors and Choreographers Society resources — some free material on professional practice and standards.
• A UWF librarian and the library's arts collections — included in enrolment; scores, recordings, image and film databases are subscriptions a student already has, and most never find out.

Career Pathways

• Actor (SOC 27-2011) — ⚠ overwhelmingly freelance, project-based and competitive, with long gaps between engagements. Nearly everyone who works in this field assembles income from several sources, and knowing that at the start is more useful than learning it later.
• Theatre educator and teaching artist — K-12 teaching requires Florida teacher certification; teaching-artist and residency work does not and is a real market.
• Director, stage manager, and production roles — stage management in particular is consistently in demand and less crowded than performance.
• Voice, audiobook, and commercial voice work — a growing market that draws directly on vocal training.
• Theme park and cruise line performance — ⚠ Florida is one of the largest live-performance employers in the world through Orlando's parks and the cruise industry out of Miami, Port Canaveral and Tampa. These are salaried, contracted performance jobs with benefits, and they audition regularly.
• Corporate and applied theatre — training, simulation, standardised patient work in medical education, and communication coaching. UWF publishes TPP1200C Healthcare Theater, which is exactly this.
• Adjacent professional work — the training in presence, voice, listening and reading people transfers directly into sales, law, teaching, ministry, therapy and management. This is not a consolation prize; it is a genuine and common outcome.
• ⚠ Florida context: the parks and cruise lines, regional and professional theatres across the state, film and television production, and a substantial community and educational theatre sector.

Special Information

⚠⚠ The UWF theatre performance sequence, and why it is unforgiving

UWF publishes a tightly chained performance sequence. Laid out, it looks like this:

• TPP2110 Acting I → TPP3155 Acting II → TPP4113 Acting III
• TPP3155 + TPP3650 Script Analysis → TPP3310 Play Directing
• TPP3155 → TPP3252C Music Theatre Scene Study
• THE2000 + TPP2120 → TPP2500 Movement for the Actor
• THE2300 → TPP3650 Script Analysis

• ⚠⚠ TPP3155 is the hinge. Three later courses depend on it, and it depends on TPP2110 — not on TPP2100 Acting for Non-majors, which gates nothing. Choosing the wrong introductory acting course costs a year here.
• ⚠ Arts sequences are frequently offered in one term only. A chain four courses deep with annual offerings means a single missed or failed course delays graduation by a full year, not a term. Map the whole sequence against the offering pattern with an advisor in your first year.
• The sequence also crosses into the THE prefix — THE2000 and THE2300 are prerequisites for courses here. A student planning only within TPP will miss them.
• ⚠ Transfer students should expect to be placed by audition rather than admitted by transcript, and placement can put you back a level regardless of credit awarded.

⚠⚠⚠ Rehearsal outside class hours — plan for it before you register

• UWF publishes this requirement in the course description, which most catalogs do not. Believe it.
• ⚠ The hard part is not your time; it is coordinating several other people's. Actors have jobs, classes and their own rehearsals. Recruit and schedule in week one, before the competition for the same actors starts.
• ⚠⚠ This course is difficult to combine with a term already carrying a production commitment — performing in a mainstage show while directing a scene project is a common and avoidable overload. Ask an advisor how the department schedules the two.
• Book rehearsal space early; it is finite and contested at exactly the times everyone is free.

⚠⚠ What new directors get wrong, and what to do instead

• Result direction does not work. "Be angrier" tells an actor what you want to see and nothing about how to produce it. Give an action or an adjustment — something the actor can do.
• ⚠ Blocking imposed before actors have explored tends to look imposed. Come prepared with a plan and hold it loosely; the best staging usually comes from what actors do naturally, shaped.
• Prioritise notes ruthlessly. A long note list delivered whole is not usable. Three things an actor can act on beat twenty they cannot remember.
• ⚠⚠ The director holds responsibility for the rehearsal room's safety and conduct. That includes consent for physical and intimate staging, choreographed and rehearsed rather than improvised, and a clear route for raising concerns. Authority in a rehearsal room is real, and so is the obligation that comes with it.
• Actors talk to each other. A reputation as a director who is prepared, punctual and respectful is the thing that gets your next project cast.

⚠⚠ What the suffix does and does not tell you in the arts

• SCNS offers institutions a limited set of suffix options — none, C for combined lecture and laboratory, and L for laboratory — and none of them describes a studio, a rehearsal room, or a private lesson.
• ⚠ So arts departments fit real formats into the nearest available designation, and the fit is frequently poor. UWF publishes TPP2101L and TPP3102L as acting studios under a laboratory suffix, TPP2710C as voice under a combined suffix, and TPP2110 as acting under no suffix at all — three suffixes for what are all studio-format courses.
• The description records the course; the suffix records how it was filed. When they disagree, believe the description — and when transferring an arts course, send the description and the syllabus rather than the number alone.
• ⚠ The same number is frequently published with a C at one Florida institution and without one at another, which is why the statewide inventory and a given catalog so often disagree on suffix. SCNS equivalency does not cross suffixes, so this is evaluated by hand.

Transfer, articulation, and how Florida course levels work

In the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System the first digit is the level: 1 and 2 are lower division, 3 and 4 upper division, 5 and above graduate. ⚠ A lower-division course generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement. SCNS equivalency runs on the number and the content, so a course transfers as what it is rather than as what its title resembles.

⚠⚠ The arts carry a transfer complication that most disciplines do not: admission is frequently by audition or portfolio, not by transcript. A performance or studio programme may accept your credit and still require you to audition or submit a portfolio for placement into the major, and placement can put a transferring student back a level regardless of the credit awarded.

Programmatic accreditation matters here. Many music programmes are accredited by NASM, art and design programmes by NASAD, and theatre programmes by NAST. ⚠ Accredited programmes carry specific curricular requirements, so a course that articulates may still not satisfy the requirement it appears to match. Ask the receiving department, not only the registrar.

Course format and position in the curriculum

• Scheduled studio or class sessions with substantial required preparation outside them.
• ⚠ Attendance in a studio or performance course is not comparable to attendance in a lecture. The work happens in the room, with other people, and a missed session cannot be made up by reading. Attendance policies in these courses are correspondingly strict.
• UWF publishes no contact hours or terms of offering. Arts sequences are frequently offered in one term only, so a missed course can delay a degree by a full year — confirm with the department.

TPP3310 is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida.