Directing

A few years back I saw a production of Verdi's opera Rigoletto. It's the story of a hunchback court jester, who has a beautiful young daughter he keeps tucked away at home, away from meddling eyes. She knows nothing of his "day job". One day, however, some of the guys at court, who have long been the brunt of his acrid wit, discover that he has a daughter. They kidnap her. The scene that follows has all the men at court taunting Rigoletto.

In any case, the director of the opera decided it would be a great idea if all the men in this scene, save Rigoletto himself, were to carry these massive calla lilies. I mean they had three-foot long stalks, and flowerheads about 10 inches across. They sang their ditty, then in synchrony all tossed their flowers to the ground. Subtle, you know, Gilda was Rigoletto's flower and all ... implication of deflowering and the like. You get it. The flowers remained on stage for the next hour of the show, meaning every character in every scene had to gingerly step around them, or trip over them, creating quite an amusing sideline to the essential action of the show.

Another time, I went to see a production of Beethoven's only opera Fidelio. Suffice it that the character Florestan is a political prisoner hidden away in a dungeon. His wife Leonora pretends to be a boy Fidelio and takes on employment as an assistant to the prison keeper.

Typically, the dungeon door plays some role in the staging, especially as the opening of the dungeon door symbolizes freedom for the prisoners. But in this production, the door was so dominant, that I had trouble looking or thinking about anything else. At one point, two extras slowly open the door, which was raked on the stage. The thing was about 25 or 30 feet across, so opening it was no mean feat. Instead of paying attention to the music and the story, I found myself wondering whether they would actually get it open without incident.

Why am I telling you this? The point in both cases is the same. Something minor, something supplemental was given spotlight treatment, which detracted from the more important elements. Because the gestures were so large, they were lent a degree of salience that was not warranted. The audience was led to the door and the flowers as if they were the prime movers of the story.

The director had failed. In many ways, we play the role of director in our children's lives. We set the stage, and highlight the characters and events that strike us as most important. Taking the larger picture, stepping back from the moment, and deciding what one or two things to take away from each experience is something we can do, that will help our children learn, and aid us in a shared understanding with them.

As a child grows, they develop an interest in shared attention, which is most evident in manual pointing. Prelinguistic children, and those in the one-word stage just love to point at objects like the moon, or an animal, sometimes accompanying the gesture with a one-word label. They delight in sharing their experience with us. Parents and caregivers often reciprocate, reinforcing the behavior. But experience, like stage action, is complex. Everything is all together. The job of a director, and our job as parents, is to aid the audience or child to learn to background and foreground different elements.

One way I've heard autism described is an inability to weed out the distracting noise of life. One way we can help our children, is to guide their attention to particular aspects of their experience and the environment around them.