I have worked with fabulous directors who create wonderful environments and experiences, and awful directors who foster really unpleasant ones. Sometimes the same director has provided both extremes in different instances.

What makes the difference? 

Obviously, this is an abstract and subjective question. The difference between a good director and a bad director (and those terms are hardly absolute, anyway) could be tracked to many unique variables.

If you ask me, though, one of the most critical and most underrated traits that make or break a director is their mindset regarding their actors. I think many directors who would be excellent get this mindset completely backwards– and this is a fatal mistake.

I believe that many approach the entire discipline of directing with the wrong perspective.

It’s a very particular part of mindset that I’m talking about. And it’s a critical element. I’d hazard to say that if your intentions are right in every other sense, but wrong in this one way, then the whole venture is a wash.

Directors have a bad habit of getting gratitude wrong.

More specifically, they mistake the way gratitude should flow through their production. Many directors get stuck on the idea of directing as a sort of favor. They feel like they are doing the actors and the community at large a service by directing their show. They take control of the hard parts of the process– the planning, the paperwork, the cohesive artistic vision– and the actors get to have fun within those parameters. Metaphorically, you could say that the director builds the playground, and the actors get to play in it.

And there is certainly some truth to this idea. A good director does manage all these things, and does act as a sort of playground supervisor to ensure the kids are playing productively. There’s plenty to be said about how a capable director working on a quality production can uplift an actor or a community.

Maybe directing could be called a service. But at the end of the day, even the best director can’t perform a service if there are no actors to work with them.

Ultimately, actors are what make a director. An actor can work independently of a director. In the theater, directors can’t really work independently of actors.

I think respectable directors recognize this dynamic, and I think the truly excellent ones embrace it. If directing is a service, we need to clarify who the service is for. A director who approaches directing as a genuine service to the actors, and embraces the responsibility this requires, really can’t go wrong.

Many directors think of directing as a service to the actors, but forget to take responsibility for this service. When it’s a service in name only, and directors forget that the actors are what give them their power, the service becomes false and backhanded. They think, “this actor should feel thankful towards me because I gave them this role,” when they should think: “This actor has done a great job in this role. I’m thankful for their talents and the work they’ve put in.”

A director sacrifices a lot of personal time and energy for a production. Collectively, their actors sacrifice multitudes more— likely hundreds to thousands of hours when added up. Truly positive environments can only be fostered when directors set aside their own egos and learn to respect that contribution. A production may require a lot of legwork from the director, but it also requires countless hours of actor commitment.

Forget the notion of actors showing you gratitude. As far as you’re concerned, this concept doesn’t exist. Instead, start showing your gratitude for the actors.

It can’t be a shallow affirmation, either. Showing gratitude can’t stop at telling your actors you respect their efforts. To avoid superficial niceties, show your gratitude in practical ways. Don’t waste actors’ time. Communicate with them professionally and compassionately. Listen and respond to their concerns with rapidity. Treat others even better than you want to be treated.

If you can master this, I believe you’ve mastered one of the most important traits of a wonderful theatre director.

Once the director does this, truly makes their production a service for someone else, then the actors may show gratitude of their own will.

But don’t try to demand it. It never works that way.