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« on: Dec 01, 2008, 02:21 pm »
Wow, yeah, I've just had a similar situation in high school theatre...
Two students (seniors) who had only acted were directors of two one acts, and basically thrown in with no guidance. Lots of problems because of lack of experience and maturity.
One director would often casually start his rehearsals late, after playing soccer with his cast into rehearsal time, and watch only part of the rehearsal before wandering elsewhere to do "tech" work. The constant tardiness of the lead actor was often used as an excuse for rehearsal not to start, as he said he couldn't do anything without him. When trying to reinforce rehearsal times with him, or told by the other director to call the cast in, I would be met with the ultimatum "I'm the director." I tried to keep up the morale of the actors, do everything I could in my job to help maintain normalcy, and tried to pick up the slack wherever possible. At one point in frustration, I told him as a friend, "I'm not the director, but you need to be." A few weeks in, the other director began doing most of the directing for his play, because her play was already solid. This director took over again a week from performance, and replaced me with one of my stage crew as his SM in tech week, because of "power issues". My replacement was a great crew member, but as she admitted to me, completely unexperienced as an SM, so I spent the rest of the run guiding her through it. This was difficult, though, as the director did not want me even in the backstage area during his performance. Luckily I already had everything on-and backstage set up for the cast already, and the shows went off surprisingly well, considering everything.
Several of the actors from this show, who I've worked with before, thanked me for what I did do and putting up with some of the petty behavior. One of them told me, "You're still my stage manager!" That felt good after everything.
What I've chosen to take from it, what I think we have to take from it, is that in these situations, all you can do is do your job well, and try to do everything possible to help others do the same. If you do that, I think the cast knows it and will respect you more for it.