5 minute read
What (and How) I Learned
BY OZ SCOTT
Oz Scott is an accomplished director of theatre, television, and film. He was integral to the development of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and directed productions of the play at New Federal Theatre, The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, and on Broadway. Scott continues to direct regionally and internationally, most recently a production of Intimate Apparel at Arizona Theatre Company.
I have carried on the tradition of my father in the entertainment business. He was a preacher—a good one. I joke about it but there is a lot of truth in it. Our jobs are very similar: to make you think, to make you laugh, and to help you to enjoy life. My father was very important to my development as an artist and person. As well as being a preacher, he was a teacher. He taught all the new student chaplains in the US Army from 1946 to 1959—the imams, priests, rabbis, and ministers. He was an early pioneer in using television cameras for classes. There is a picture in the February 1953 issue of Ebony magazine of him teaching with one of the big old, bulky cameras.
My style of directing is probably very similar to his. I tell stories when I’m working. For me, telling stories is a way of connecting the actors to who they are, what they should be feeling, and what’s going on in the characters’ world. Both my father and my mother were inspirations to me. My mother got her master’s degree at Teacher’s College at Columbia University back in the ’50s. She took television/film classes. As a child I remember her talking about cutting film, camera angles, and how long a scene should be.
My mother also took me to see plays. She took me to the closing night of a play on Broadway when I was a kid. It was called A Hand Is on the Gate, a collection of poems and songs that Roscoe Lee Browne had put together to create a Broadway musical. In some ways, it helped contribute to the development of for colored girls, because for colored girls is basically a collection of great poems with a fabulous cast. A Hand Is on the Gate also had a spectacular cast: Cicely Tyson, Moses Gunn, James Earl Jones, Ellen Holly, Gloria Foster, Josephine Premice, Leon Bibb, and of course Roscoe. Watching those brilliant actors transform those poems, all of them became friends and inspirations to me. For years, when I’d walk by an old record store I’d look for a copy of A Hand Is on the Gate to replace the copy that I had worn out. I always thanked Roscoe for that early inspiration.
Another important period in my development as an artist was when I was 19. I was working for a company called Living Stage in Washington, DC, founded by Robert Alexander at Arena Stage. Living Stage was an improvisational theatre company where we went into prisons, halfway houses, daycares, community centers, and schools, performing for kids one day, inmates the next, then a rehab center the next day. I was the stage manager and utility actor when needed. I kept the production going and gave notes when the director wasn’t there. Giving notes for improvisational theatre is different than a play because you’re not saying, “This line is wrong. Your blocking was off.” My notes were, “I didn’t feel it.” “I don’t know how you made that transition.” “Where’d that come from?” “You weren’t really in it.” That experience very much contributed to who I am as a director today.
We did eight weeks of improvisational theatre rehearsals and then we did three months on the road, six days a week, going from school to school, place to place, prison to prison. So much coming out of those performances of Living Stage was inspiring. We would say, “Every story can have more than one ending.” We would get almost to the end and say to the audience, “Okay, how do you want to see this end?” Or, “What else would you like to see?” We’d do two or three different endings. It helped hone my storytelling tremendously because I’m always thinking about “What are the other stories? How could it end?”
Another significant part of my directing growth came when I took acting classes. I’m not an actor, but I would take acting classes because it made me see, understand, and remember the actor’s tools. One time I had this wonderful actor who had one line. It was not a big line, but he couldn’t do it. He kept stumbling over it. It’s always said that one line is as difficult as 20. So, I went to the side, and I acted it out loud. When I did that, I realized it was a tongue twister. I said, “Oh, it just needs a tweak here. Just a word here, and it’ll be great.” So I say sometimes: take an acting class. Step outside of your comfort zone.
