Tony Award-winning Director Mary Zimmerman explained how to overcome common difficulties in theater productions at the Chazen Art Museum Thursday.
Zimmerman received the 2002 Tony Award for Best Direction for her adaptation of ""Metamorphes.""
In her lecture, Zimmerman explained how to overcome the absence of special effects in theater productions.
She said the key to success in the theater is convincing an audience something is real.
Zimmerman attributes her achievements to her successful execution of visually challenging plays, such as those that require fighting scenes and the creative use of metaphorical props.
She successfully executed one of these metaphorical props in ""The Odyssey,"" when she represented blood and water with cloth.
""The world inside a room relies on substituting one thing from another,"" she said.
Zimmerman said another challenge is translating a novel into a play, because the narrator's descriptions in novels are not present in plays.
""Things that are meant to be read are written fundamentally differently than things that are meant to be embodied,"" she said.
To overcome this challenge, Zimmerman said she portrays the characters' thoughts through their actions.
Another trick she uses is having a character say direct quotes from the original piece's text. She used this method in ""The Odyssey"" when the actress playing the Goddess Athena read a monologue from the original narration from Homer's epic poem.
Zimmerman's appearance is part of a series of lectures by successful professionals in the humanities field called ""Humanities Without Boundaries.""
