“I’ve always thought that Joe was able to say, ‘I don’t know.’” There is a difference between the not-knowing that results from a lack of preparation and that which allows for an abundance of discovery. As Joe acknowledges, “I say, ‘I don’t know’ a lot in rehearsal, but I don’t like to pretend I don’t know things. If there are things I know, I’ll say, ‘I think it’s this,’ and we can just move on to the next thing. So when I say, ‘I don’t know,’ you can just watch the team climb into that space, helping us know.” Joe credits this ability to the preparation he does before he walks into the rehearsal room. He storyboarded all three plays and feels strongly that “if I’m not prepped deeply on the front end, I’m not watching the actor, I’m staring at the script. The greatest gift I can give to an actor is the quality of my attention. So the best thing I can do is to know it all well enough that I can be fully present to what’s happening in front of me.” That fullness of presence is auditory as well as visual. Joe occasionally listens to actors with his eyes closed, an inclination he attributes to his father, who was blind. William (Will) Sturdivant, who played Bolingbroke, describes how in rehearsals, “you can hear [Joe] listening. Closing his eyes and really hearing it, which is nice because you’re like, ‘I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, but I know what I’m saying.’” Joe can prompt most of the plays from memory and often does. Some actors were frustrated getting line notes from a director whose eyes were literally closed, but Joe maintains that “it’s good for the actors because it reminds us if you’re not saying the right words in the right order, somebody in the room is going to know.”
William Sturdivant as Henry IV in Henry IV at the Guthrie, directed by Joseph Haj PHOTO DAN NORMAN
Joseph Haj directing Tyler Michaels King in Richard II at the Guthrie PHOTO JOSHUA CUMMINS
This recall also allows Joe freedom of movement in the rehearsal room: “I don’t have to stare at the script and follow along to understand what the things are. I could just watch and listen to the actors and respond and respond and respond and respond. And that’s the beauty of knowing it well. [It] allows you to get up, allows you to get around the room, allows you to stand in close with the actors.” Joe sometimes sits in a chair next to the directors’ table, almost never behind it. If he’s sitting, he will frequently jump up to help an actor figure out an action: how Hal should touch his sleeping father, or whether Doll Tearsheet rolling drunkenly across a table would work better with her legs upstage or downstage (downstage). “I’ve always appreciated the fact that he’s not stuck behind the table” says Yoke. “It’s nice to have somebody come out on the floor with you…[and] talk about what actually happens, what the posture is, where the impulses are to move. He’s a very physical director in that
26 SDC JOURNAL | FALL 2024