Is a Theatre Director an Artist or a Craftsperson

IS A THEATRE DIRECTOR AN ARTIST OR A CRAFTSPERSON? 

Artists make art to express what they are feeling or thinking and they can do so in many ways including creating theatre. A Craftsman creates work that is normally recognised and paid for. The difference between an artist and a craftsman lies is the motivation behind their work; an artist has an internal desire to create work but a craftsman has no such desire, and yet both are still made. Whether or not there is a desire to express something or not in the theatre, you must first be able to imagine something before it can exist and therefore I would argue that a director of theatre must always begin as an artist and become a craftsman, where the artist creates expression and the craftsman constructs this expression.

An artist creates art because they cannot express themselves clearer in any other way – words limit their ability to communicate fully: “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being – Oscar Wilde” (Levinson, 2008). An artist can express themselves outwardly through whatever means they find most effective.

The actor-tribune creates his art not for art’s sake; it is not even by means of ‘art’ that he desires to work. The actor-tribune sets himself the task of developing scenic situations not to impress the spectator with the beauty of their theatricality, but like a surgeon whose task it is to uncover what lies within. (Braun, 1996)

Art can be pretty much whatever anybody says is art, and an artist is similarly anybody who says he is one. This leaves any definition of "artist" and "art" so vague as to be meaningless. A person may have a brilliant imagination and hundreds of stories to tell but it does not mean they can tell those stories clearly. Theatre according to Grotowski cannot exist without an audience and an actor which also means it cannot exist without communication between two people. When we engage in any art form we are engaging with a person’s vision, one that has come from within their mind. And it is not an easy task to articulate the complexity of our own minds, therefore if an artist is not skilled their art can arguably be said to be void as it cannot be understood by other people. However of course there are some contemporary arts which have no meaning or imagination behind them whatsoever but can inflict emotion and understanding in an audience. For example, Exit Through The Gift Shop is a documentary film by the graffiti artist Banksy, and is about a man called Thierrey who is encouraged by Banksy to make his own graffiti art work. Thierrey copies other

artists and passes them off as his own in a highly successful gallery opening within a matter of month: “Most artists take years to develop their style, Thierry seemed to miss out on all those bits” (2010). Banksy was introduced to Thierrey as a talented film maker however he turned out to be a horder of tapes and with no editing or film skill at all: “Uhmmm... You know... it was at that point that I realized that maybe Thierry wasn't actually a film maker, and he was maybe just someone with mental problems who happened to have a camera” (2010). Banksy no longer encourages everyone to make art themselves. Despite the lack of natural

imagination or talent behind Thierry’s work, his gallery was still a look into the man’s mind, deranged or not, and from watching the film I still felt like I understood him more than I could have done in person. But this does not make him a craftsman and this is because the result of my understanding came from the film made by Paranoid Pictures and not from his art works. A director needs skill in order to express his art otherwise it can end up the meaningless and ridiculous rambling of a mad man like Thierrey.

A plumber would not dare call himself a plumber unless he were qualified in the opinion of others to do plumbing, and had experience and credentials to prove it. The same is true of an automobile mechanic, elementary school teacher or newspaper reporter. You can't just call yourself a college professor or medical doctor and expect to be one. You need to have something to back it up. The term "artist," unlike "electrician," or "dog trainer," neither conveys qualification, nor is it specific enough to shed much light on what a person may actually do. (Goines, 2003)

Meyerhold wanted to get rid of naturalism and as a result he created a very stylistic theatre – “Theatre should reveal little and leave lots to the audience’s imagination. A work of art can influence only through the imagination. Therefore it must constantly stir the imagination (Schopenhauer)”. To stir the imagination is "the essential condition of aesthetic activity as well as the basic law of the fine arts” (1996, Braun). Braun says naturalist theatre does not trust its audiences to imagine or understand and as a result you get an analysis of dialogue: “It is in the productions of Ibsen that one sees the method of the naturalistic director revealed most clearly. The production is broken up into a series of scenes and each separate part of action is analysed in detail, even the most trifling scenes. Then all the carefully analysed parts are stuck back together again” (Braun 1996) and by doing so they fail to see the play as a whole. His biomechanics was a craft, scientific even: “Meyerhold’s advanced biomechanics as the theatrical equivalent of industrial time-and-motion study and compared it to the experiments in the scientific organization of labour” (Braun, 1996) but at the same time he was called “‘Peoples Artist of the Republic’ to mark the twentieth anniversary of his debut as a director” (Braun, 1996). He constantly experimented but what he was doing in that room was creative and that made him an artist:

We need to change not only the forms of our art but our methods too. An actor working for the new class needs to examine all the canons of the past. The very craft of the actor must be completely recognized. (Braun, 1996)

A craftsman is able to make something imaginary physically real to the best that it can be imagined. And this is important if any kind of communication is to happen between an actor and an audience: 

One shouldn’t, as is too often done nowadays, simply shunt craft aside and think expression is all, neither should one overly celebrate craft without acknowledging that craft alone doesn’t necessarily lead to something of merit. One can say awful things with very artfully and wonderful things crudely, but one can’t pretend that either craft or art on its own will lead to some specific result they each have their place and balance or imbalance in generating a response. Controlling that response, or knowing how to put craft to the work of art is what the most skilled artists do.  (Greig 2011)

But the craftsman can create something and not think about it at all – he uses his physical being and not his mental capacity and therefore what he creates is an imitation of someone else’s artistry: “So the “craftsman” (I’d prefer “technician”) knows how to achieve a certain effect, but does not understand how to achieve these effects in a way which work together for the whole (like Robert’s beloved gestalt). This does not mean that one shouldn’t worry about these technical skills though”. However Henry Moore argues that craftsmanship is entirely artistic because of the impulse behind it, no matter how many far removed: “A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds”. Michelangelo said that art comes from the head first and that the creation made is therefore a result of the head/mind: “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands – Emile Zola”.  But for those Craftsmen who are also artists, it is different; an artist who creates his own work with skill is truly an expressionist, however in most theatre directing cases a director must make use of more than his own skill to tell a story because he cannot possess all the skills himself: “In this view, there is no separation between the “artist” and the “craftsman” because they are all craftsman in a sense – some are simply better than others, some masters, others laymen” (Mubi, Amos 2011). Quentin Tarantino for example is a film director who likes the way he writes but does not consider himself a writer. But is it possible to be both a craftsman and artist at the same time when one is regarded as a dreamer and the other a pursuer? Perhaps, but I imagine very few are able to exercise their imaginations with brilliant skill: “There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. The other becomes a craftsman”.

The main difference between a craftsman and an artist is that an artist requires the impulses of the heart and has a motive intent in connecting with humans and expressing rather than just a means to make a living: “A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist –Louis Nizer”. A director must first become an artist in order to have something to create and then he must become a craftsman so that he can make his vision a reality. And in order for his vision to really become a reality he must be skilled and talented in the art of not just imagination but communication also: “When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman – Jean de la Bruyere”

J.M Barrie - Peter Pan