ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Let's say one day you had a craving for cheesecake, but you were way too lazy to make the cake [Girl searches for cheesecake recipe online]

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yourself.

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So you wrote down all of the steps and collected all of the ingredients…. [Girl walks away with a list of ingredients]

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…and then you gave it all to your little brother.

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Sure, you gave him all the tools he needed to make that cake… but are you gonna end

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up with your idea of the perfect cheesecake?

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Well, no… you'll probably end up with your younger brother's interpretation of a cheesecake. [Girl thinking of her little brothers cheesecake]

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Which might not be quite as rad.

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…and might also be on fire….yikes. [Boy walks into room with cheesecake on fire]

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Anyway, this same principle can be applied to plays.

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When you hand off your completed play to a director, there's no guarantee that it'll [Woman hands director a copy of her play]

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turn out exactly the way you wrote it.

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Sometimes, the director will decide to add, change, or remove things from the play to

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change how their audience will view the performance.

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This could mean adding a new character, changing a specific line of dialogue, moving a scene [Coop discussing director's edits]

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to a new setting, adding a new action for a character, or adding any number of special

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lighting and sound effects to draw attention to something.

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Really, the director could do anything.

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They could add a lion in there if they wanted to. [A director in a graveyard and a lion appears]

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Which…would make sense in The Lion King.

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Maybe not so much in Hamlet.

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This is why so many directors are able to direct classic plays like Shakespeare and

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have it feel completely fresh and original each time. [People walking outside a theater]

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Take Romeo and Juliet.

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One director might do a traditional performance.

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Another might choose to set the play in modern New York.

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While another might turn it into a swingin' musical. [Man in modern New York and a disco ball appears]

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Or even a contemporary mime performance.

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Directors can take great liberties in turning scripts into a performance they can call their

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own, which is one of the great strengths of theater that makes it so exciting. [Mime waving in the crowd]

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And if there’s one thing you can be sure of, it’s that playwrights can’t be control

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freaks.

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Because no matter what happens, they might just end up with a lion. [Mime on stage and lion appears]

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And if we said we weren't going to end this video with a stupid pun….guess what?

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We'd be lion. [People run away and Mime sitting in the audience]

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Ehehehehehe.

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