Staging a Proposal (not very original i know...)

This week we had our proposal contest, for which Giselle's and mine won. We also looked at the future dates for next year, we must brace ourselves, deadlines are coming (well sorta.)

For my proposal, i needed to change several things in order to adapt it for it to be actually stageable, given that we have the best resources on Earth! (mind the sarcasm). I decided to change a bit the lights, and just have the entire stage lit, because there is no way we can arrange for them to direct into the circular stage, and then be rearranged for Giselle's proposal. So for now, because we still have to try out things, i will most likely just light the stage with a regular light bulb, and then when the part of the full lighting comes, i will just turn on the entire stage, without keeping the focus on the circle.
Now, the most important change i had to do, is the PG-13 thing. I cant have an actress (who is a minor by the way) naked on stage because of obvious reasons, so instead, i decided to strip her up to her undergarments. In a way, I'm still sticking to my concept and vision, because she is still taking off her dress of lies, and is revealing her true self. I think that in a way, it is fine to keep a little clothing because Blanche is still hiding some of the major truths, such as the prostitution and the illegal relationships she was having. So after all, this decision does not alter or interrupt my concept or vision, so i can keep on working towards that.
For this staging i was crystal clear on how i wanted my actress to be. I wanted someone with a powerful voice, someone that has a lot of skills with her voice and intentions, and is able to recite a long monologue without boring people. This is because there aren't a lot of actions in my proposal, and i need the actress to be able to transmit all of these painful emotions through her voice more than her body. Still, i want the physicality, and acting as a whole, to be extremely realistic (naturalistic if you will), without the usual crying in the floor Hamlet sort of thing. I want her body to transmit the pain of taking off the clothes/lies, and revealing her true self. Moreover, i need an actress with a powerful energy, that can be blasted into the audience with a single movement. Now i know it sounds very weird, but the character's energy must be felt by the audience, in the sense that they must feel her pain.
That is why i chose, Siu. Because, as abstract as it may sound, i believe she has a very good control of energy, in the sense that she can impact the audience with a few movements, which is exactly what i'm looking for. However, even though her voice skills are very good, i think i need to focus more on her intentions to get exactly where i want to.
As for Mitch, even though there was no way Daniel wasn't going to play him, he fits perfectly into what i'm looking for. The character has literally one line, but it's a very powerful and influential one, because it marks the spot where someone tries to approach a fully vulnerable Blanche, and thus she conceals again. So i wanted an actor who had very good vocal skills, like Daniel. Also, i wanted someone with a lot of stage presence, which i think Daniel has, because the character is standing at the back without doing anything, making him almost invisible. Yet i want his presence to be felt, because he represents that link between Blanche's reality and fantasy.

Something that really intrigued me and left me thinking a lot, was something two of the actors said. They mentioned that they wanted to work with me because i was very harsh and was not afraid to tell them they were doing things wrong, and pushing them. Now i think it is sort of true, in the sense that i am very straightforward. But maybe is not a good thing when it comes to your relationship with the actors, because they might eventually hate me because i'm too harsh on them. I don't really care if they hate me or not (i have no emotions), but i think that is something that can clearly mess up the director-actor dynamic, influencing on the final work. And i believe it is imperative that they form a strong relationship to able to work together; for the actor to understand what the director is saying, and for the director to further analyze strength and difficulties in the actor. If i don't achieve this (not the case), then maybe i will be missing out on several things, and the final product will not be as good as is should.
However, i still think it is important to have this trait they mentioned, to push forward and not give up just because it looks "fine", because you seek for it to be genuinely perfect. I do think i always look for this, and i am not content with a mediocre or average work. So i think it is important that a director is looking to push his actors, and not mind the "i don't want to be mean" part.

On another note, Giselle wanted me (and i accepted) to be Stanley in her proposal. She said she was looking for an actor who could transform into not only the character, but also the body into a surreal figure to convey emotions. I think her proposal is amazing, and even if she has to change a lot of things for it to be doable in our beautifully equipped stage, it will be a great performance.
My concern is that i'm not very good at learning lines, specially when it comes to a one on one conversation, as there are no other actors to give me cues. It happened to me a few years back, because i didn't even move in the stage, so it all came down to learning a bunch of lines. That is definitely an area for improvement.
My other concern is time. We have literally two weeks to stage it, and i have to work on both proposals at the same time, not to mention my other subjects' deadlines and obligations. Originally, i voted for us not to stage anything, because i felt that we wouldn't make it, and i didn't want to present a random piece of acting, with a lot of mistakes and errors. But apparently, my team is extremely confident about it, and they are willing to work a lot, which i think is amazing and very useful. I am trusting them on this one. And i think this is very important when it comes to directing, obviously there is always a pessimist (im a realist ok?), who will say they won't make it. So it comes down to the positive thoughts, the hard work, and the team work and dynamic to get through it and actually achieve the final goal, in our case, the staging of two proposals.

The day of the staging, i want the audience to leave commenting about our skills and how awesome we are. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but it will be nice to hear i did a good job in theatre one last time at school.