There's a peculiar thing about being a director. You're frequently sitting in a room watching someone do something that you couldn't possibly do as well as they can.
And then you tell them how to do it better.
Recently, I gave a very experienced actor a note about the end of a line. Not the meaning, or the emotion, or even the volume. Just the final letter of the final word.
I'd learnt this trick from another actor, with even more experience. If you give the final sound of a word real emphasis, the whole word is suddenly audible.
The actor was sceptical.
Which I understood. It seems such a small thing, perhaps even a rather pedantic thing, to be told when you've spent your life speaking on stage.
But he tried it.
And sure enough, everyone in the room could hear the word.
Which meant they understood the thought. And because they understood the thought, the comedy of the line worked.
All from the last letter of a word.
It's easy to forget how much depends on these tiny things.
An actor knows what they're saying. They know the line, the intention behind it, where the thought begins and where it's going. They've probably said it hundreds of times.
But the audience doesn't know any of that.
They're hearing it for the first time, and they have to understand it as it happens. They can't stop the performance and ask you to repeat yourself.
And something rather extraordinary happens when everything is clear. The audience can stop thinking about the mechanics of understanding. They stop having to listen for the words and can simply listen to what's being said.
They become absorbed.
In fact, one of the great achievements of a performance is that we forget we're watching one. We stop noticing the work. The actor is no longer an actor remembering lines, making choices, projecting their voice. We're simply watching a person, in a situation, trying to do something.
And the illusion is remarkably fragile.
A single lost word can interrupt a thought. A thought that doesn't land can lose a joke. And suddenly, for a moment, we're back in our seats, watching somebody perform.
Of course, none of this means the director knows more than the actor. Quite often the opposite is true.
But the director has something the actor cannot have while they're performing.
The experience of watching it.
You cannot be entirely inside an experience and outside it at the same time.
And sometimes the most useful thing another person can offer isn't a brilliant interpretation or a profound insight.
It's simply to tell you what actually reached them.